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Savely Bass. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID UKR008.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b49v6p

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

TABLE OF CONTENTS ITEM TRANSCRIPT

ENGLISH TRANSLATION 2 CITATION & RIGHTS 13

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Savely Bass. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID UKR008.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b49v6p

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION —Today is June 15, 2009. We are in Dnepropetrovsk [Dnipro], meeting with a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. Please introduce yourself.

My name is Savely—or Zayvel in Yiddish—Borisovich Bass.

—When and where were you born? Please tell us about your family and your prewar years.

I was born on August 31, 1922, in the city of Kremenchug in Poltava Oblast. My father was still a young man; he was a furrier, a fur tailor. My mother was first a housewife, and then a seamstress. In 1925 my family moved to Dnepropetrovsk, where my father worked in his line of work. In 1930 I started going to the Dnepropetrovsk School No. 71, a Ukrainian school: they taught in Ukrainian. In 1940 I graduated. By the way, in school I was the secretary of Komsomol organization and was responsible for military-related projects. In some way this determined my future line of work. In October 1940 I was drafted into the army. Because I had a secondary education, I was sent to a tank unit. It was located near the town of Zolochev [Zolochiv], Khmelnitsky Oblast. I was assigned to the 20th Tank Regiment of the 10th Tank Division in the Kiev Special Military District. Since it was uncommon to have a high school education at the time, I was sent to a school for tank radio operators and gunners for the command tanks—because not all tanks had radio units back then. We went through recruit training and took our oath. Training was really intense back then, really intense. I was trained to operate the BT-7 tank. This is a light tank with а continuous track, and it could also use regular wheels on roads. It had a 45mm cannon and was outfitted with a 71-TK1 radio unit. We were taught Morse code and radio communications. That tank only had a crew of three, so I was the radio operator and the loader. The gunner also served as the commander. I only loaded the cannon. There was a cannon with a machine gun mounted on it. So, that’s what happened before the war.

—Do you remember anything about 1933, when there was hunger in Ukraine? Did it affect Dnepropetrovsk?

As to the Holodomor, which has recently received so much attention in our government and our press, I can say the following. I lived in Dnepropetrovsk and my parents worked in the center of town. We did not experience any hunger at all. We received our bread, butter, and other rations. Of course we knew there was hunger, but I think that the way it is being portrayed now is completely wrong. If people did come begging from the villages, there were no more of them then than there are now. We did not experience the Holodomor, and I would like to say that it is incorrect to say that it was a Holodomor of ethnic Ukrainians. It was a food shortage that affected everyone.

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Savely Bass. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID UKR008.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b49v6p

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

On the other hand, it was apparently the case that people were hoarding bread in the villages, especially the kulaks [wealthy farmers]. There was a lot of inequality in the villages. And it is wrong to say that it was the “Holodomor of ethnic Ukrainians."

—But there were probably no kulaks left by 1933.

No, they were still around. Collective farms were just beginning to be formed.

—Did you parents have any other children?

I had a brother.

—Older or younger?

Younger. He was born in 1929. That was our family. Our grandparents lived in Kharkov [Kharkiv]. I never knew my paternal grandparents. They perished—well, died—in the 1930s, I think.

—Where were you when the war broke out and how did you spend the war years?

Well, that’s a long story, but I’ll tell you anyways. On the 22nd [of June, 1941,] I was in the camp like everyone else because we had just finished our training and we were preparing . . . the camp was near Zlochev.

—Zlochev?

Yes, Zlochev, or Zolochev. They use both names. We were supposed to have an athletic competition that day. There was a cross-country run and other events. We were woken up an hour later than usual, not at five but at six. An An-2 flew overhead. Low. One of the sentries shouted that they had dropped something from the plane, and about an hour later there was an alarm: war had started. We ran to our tanks, which stood on a hillside; I think there was a church nearby. Our BT-7s were fueled up and stocked with ammunition. We got to our vehicles. About half an hour later they ordered us to get breakfast. In the evening, when all of the checks had been completed, we got our marching orders. By the 23rd [of June 1941] we were already by Rava-Rus'ka and Radzillov [?]. This was our 20th Tank Regiment, and I was [in the same tank] with the regiment commander, because we had two types of BT-7. The ones equipped with a radio had this copper . . . a kind of pipe, an antenna, on the turret. My tank was like that. The battle began at dawn. I should tell you that we were fighting tank against tank. As I later found out, this was a huge tank battle. I was only a private then, having served only eight or nine months, I think. This is what happened in that battle: Our commander first hit an enemy tank and then managed to get a second one. I did not shoot, just handled the shells. I was told that we suffered heavy losses. We did not have air support. I did

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Savely Bass. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID UKR008.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b49v6p

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN not see anything because the hatches were closed. Then they gave us the order “Forward." But they told us that we had heavy losses, that the aviation . . . We would look out . . . We had a V2 engine, which ran on aircraft fuel. The engine hatch was not well protected because of how the ventilation was set up. That’s why many tanks caught fire from heavy air strafing. Our planes were not there. Not then. And many caught on fire, not so much from the enemy's tank fire . . .

But we did manage to advance, and our commander said that we had crossed the border and that the enemy had retreated. The next day we defended our positions. Then our division was given the order to retreat. Our tank survived. They did hit one of its tracks, but we managed to quickly repair it by mounting a new link onto it. We then retreated. We retreated and had just one battle a bit short of Ternopol [Ternopil]. I had a very memorable encounter there: Our column was moving down the road and I looked to the side and saw that next to us on a cart was a teacher from my School No. 71 who was sent to some Western Ukrainian school. I asked my guys to stop the tank so that I could give him a hug; then we were soon on our way. We fueled up a bit. Then some officer stopped us all, organized us in a line and we started firing again. We were shooting because the Germans were moving along the same road maybe a kilometer or kilometer and a half away from us. Then we were ordered to get back on the road and only had our second battle near Berdichev [Berdychiv]. They also told us that our final destination was Piryatin [Pyryatyn].

—What?

Piryatin, a town in Poltava Oblast, or maybe Vinnitsa [Vinnytsia] or Zhitomir Oblast. There we handed over our tanks and I among others was transferred to the 37th Armored Division, 74th Armored Regiment, 3rd Battalion. I was put with the battalion commander on a T-34 despite having never seen that tank before. It had a completely different radio system, too. We quickly got ready and moved to Poltava, where we were told that the Germans had crossed [the Dnieper] near Kremenchug and that they were now trying to encircle us. About 50 kilometers from Poltava our regiment again had to fight and again we didn’t have any air cover. Our tank was hit. It didn’t catch fire, but it was hit. There was an order for the crews of destroyed tanks to gather up. We gathered together while the fighting was still going on. We were then ordered to walk to Poltava. In Poltava all of us tank soldiers were put on a train and sent to Kharkov [Kharkiv]. In Kharkov we were put into freight cars and sent to Vladimir, beyond Moscow. I remember that when we were passing through Moscow people were already panicking because of the advancing Germans. In Vladimir we were assigned T-34 tanks. I again became the gunner-radio operator of a T-34, and again I was assigned to a command tank. It was different because the mechanic-driver sat on the left and you sat on the right with the radio equipment. In front of you was a machine gun. It was not attached to the cannon but rather ball-mounted. If I saw infantry, I would shoot at them, just like when I would take on the duties of the tank commander earlier.

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Savely Bass. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID UKR008.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b49v6p

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

After getting our new vehicles, we were immediately sent to Tula. We unloaded our equipment from the train at night. The Germans were already nearing the city. There was a town nearby named Kosaya Gora [now part of Tula], where the Kosogorsky Metallurgical Plant was located; our mission was to push the Germans out of there at any cost. All the tanks were sent on this assignment. I was still a private back then, so I could not observe much. However, we did manage to recapture Kosaya Gora. I remember that one of the tanks from our platoon had its barrel sliced off by a shell. For some reason that stuck with me. We survived, thank God! We were laying down heavy fire. What can I say? That I killed, let's say, five Germans with my machine gun? The Germans would try to escape their tanks or try to do something and I was firing just like everyone else. If they gave me an order, I followed it. Later we retreated and allowed Kosaya Gora to be recaptured . . . By the way, in Kosaya Gora there stands a tank as a memorial to the liberators from the 32nd Armored Brigade, despite the fact that we later abandoned the city. In Tula, or rather in its outskirts we dug our tanks in near a school and fired on advancing German forces. I was essentially a machine gunner. However hard the Germans were pushing . . . Our tank brigade was there. And we were told that there was also a powerful people’s militia in the area. There were weapons factories there, so everyone was well armed. There was also an anti-aircraft regiment that was positioned behind us and used their cannons to fire directly at German tanks. The Germans did not manage to take Tula. I got a shell concussion there, but that’s not important. I remember when we were moved to a train station called Laptevo, north of Tula. The Germans were trying to surround the city, but could not take it directly. They tried to get to Laptevo from the left and the right . . . Our brigade managed to hold them off there as well, and the infantry had arrived to help us, as well as the 112th Armored Division from the Far East. We had almost lost hope because we were running out of shells and ammunition, but then they arrived. After that we were sent to Rzhev. There was, so to speak, a narrow passage there, because there was this wedge with Rzhev at the tip and we had to advance [from the side]. There was this corridor, and there was a certainty we would meet up with the cavalry—I think it was Pliev or someone—and so our tanks and infantry went in. I remember that we were positioned on a foothill, firing on some village below us. The Germans were firing at point-blank range. But for some reason we did not receive an order to advance. We continued exchanging fire for some time. We dug our tanks in so that only the turret was visible. We did not lose a single vehicle, but we also could not meet them, so we were given an order to leave the encirclement. I think there was even a film about this, about the Battle of Rzhev. The full truth about the battle hasn't been written yet. After that winter set in and we . . .

— Pardon me, who could you not meet up with?

I think there were some cavalry approaching the Germans from the right. It was like a wedge, with us coming from over here . . . I remember that river, the forest, the hill. Maybe some [units] advanced further, but we were ordered to stay there so that the Germans could close the space. But as I've said, I was just a solider. What could I see? The commanders high up [knew the bigger picture]. Then we began out winter offensive near Moscow. We took part in that offensive.

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Savely Bass. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID UKR008.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b49v6p

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

I remember we liberated Yukhnovo and, around the New Year, Kaluga, where Tsiolkovsky had lived. I remember we were crossing the ice, on Oka River, I think—I haven’t been there in so long! We took Kaluga quickly and then were reorganized. Now the year was 1942. There was heavy fighting near Yukhnovo, and then we were moved to the Western Front even though we started on the Southwestern Front in the Kiev Military District. The Western Front was Tula, and the Moscow area. Later we were reassigned to the Bryansk Front, but we did not spend a long time there and mostly carried out defensive operations. This is nuts, but I remember our brigade somehow managed to bring down an enemy plane. We had anti-aircraft machine guns mounted on our tanks by then, so we shot down the plane as it flew over us. Then our brigade was north of Voronezh, near Stary Oskol. We received marching orders. By this time I was already a sergeant and our 32nd Armored Brigade was included in the 29th Armored Corps of the 5th Armored Guards Army. The corps was commanded by a man named Kirichenko and our brigade was commanded by Colonel Linev, while the army was commanded by Lieutenant General Pavel Alekseyevich Rotmistrov. The march was monstrous. We were given air cover. This was around early June 1943. We were sent into battle on July 5, near Prokhorovka. What can I tell you, Prokhorovka is a station, maybe 5 kilometers from where our brigade was positioned. On the left was a railroad, on the right, the Komsomolets state farm with a flat field, sown with either wheat or rye. I was already the gunner/radio operator of the tank brigade commander’s vehicle. They told me that I would get an order. I got the order “Steel.” I still remember it was "Steel." I radioed it on to the battalions. I will tell you that I probably survived the battle because I was in the brigade commander’s vehicle, and not in the first rows of the first wave. I would relay his orders, or sometimes he would issue them himself. Despite this, we still fired from our cannon and from our machine gun when we had the chance. I remember that one time a Tiger tank passed through our lines without being hit, but then it was set on fire, probably by the infantry . . . We suffered heavy losses. Because I was a radio operator, I heard that out of our sixty-five tanks, only seventeen remained operational after the battle. Only seventeen. After the battle we remained in the same place because the Germans did not try to advance. We went in to rescue our soldiers alongside the medics. I got a shell concussion again and was wounded in the head when I was exiting my tank . . . I crawled away to a nearby patch of forest, where the medics wanted to send me to a medical-sanitary battalion. I have proof that I was wounded and concussed, but I stayed in my brigade.

I was valued in my brigade as a good radio operator. I’m not saying that to boast, I just received special training for radio operators/gunners. They trained us. I did not mention to you that the 10th Independent Communications Battalion created radio companies to which young radio operators were sent from every regiment in order to train with new equipment. I can tell you that after that battle we felt that we needed to retreat because we suffered heavy losses despite the superiority of our aviation. It wasn't like at the start: we almost never saw German planes anymore. However, in the morning we were told that a tank battalion had come to replenish us. They must have been stationed nearby because they joined us immediately. I remember the battlefield. It looked terrifying with the smoke from the T-34 tanks, because they ran on diesel. There was black smoke, and there were burning German and Soviet tanks. It was terrifying; plus the

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Savely Bass. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID UKR008.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b49v6p

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN shooting, oh . . . Well, I don’t think you need to hear about that. I remember a joyous thing, this battalion . . . their commander Rotmistrov arrived. It was the first time that I saw such a high-ranking commander . . . everyone was told to sit near their tanks, which were arranged in a horseshoe shape. All three battalions were there and Rotmistrov, Pavel Alekseyevich, gave a speech. We sat there as he told us that despite our losses, this was a victory and that the Germans had been pushed back to their winter defense lines. The winter lines! Now we would need to advance in that direction. They retreated because they had suffered very heavy losses. But we had reinforcements and that really raised our morale. It was so unexpected, you know. They say that he was an instructor at an armored forces academy and that he was appointed to lead us. After that I remember a battle near Tamarovka, beyond Prokhorovka. The Germans had given up Prokhorovka on their own. We were a little to the right of Prokhorovka, where there was the Kharkov-Kursk railroad. Prokhorovka is the district center and a railway station. I remember an air raid that took place there. We were firing in an open field when the planes arrived. They had small bombs and machine guns. When we saw them, we knew the best course of action was to jump under a tank because there were too many planes. I had two comrades, Golubev and Susarev, and they couldn't resist—we all jumped under the tanks for protection, because even if they hit the tank with a machine gun, it wouldn't do any damage. Susarev couldn’t resist, poked his head out, and part of his head was sliced off. It turned out that we had been attacked by our own attack planes. It was terrible. Nobody warned them and they probably didn’t think that we could have advanced as far as we did. I remember that my commander, Colonel Linev, was killed near Zlochev. Maybe I have the town name wrong, it was a place near Kharkov. I think it was Zlochev. He was killed there and a monument was put up. Later our brigade captured Krasnograd [Krasnohrad], which is near Kharkov. You know, we are also considered to be liberators of Kharkov because we blocked off the road connecting Kharkov to Dnepropetrovsk. When Kharkov celebrates Liberation Day, we are invited despite not having taken part in the fight for Kharkov itself. A similar thing happened in Dnepropetrovsk. We approached the Dnieper in early October 1943 near Mishurin Rog, south of Kremenchug. Our infantry had already crossed the river and secured the opposite bank. We used a pontoon bridge to get the tanks across. I should say both our artillery and aviation provided us with cover, so not a single tank was hit or damaged during the crossing. When we got to the other bank, the infantry had laid logs down for us because the area was swampy.

We eventually made it uphill to Mishurin Rog [Myshuryn Rih], but there was no battle there. The fighting came later. I don’t recall which villages we went through, but I remember that our orders were to take Pyatikhatki [P'yatykhatky]. We crossed the Dnieper somewhere around the 14th and were in Pyatikhatki by the 18th. At night we stormed the town, captured the trains which were standing at the station, and set up camp there. The Germans ran away in various stages of undress. I remember seeing a Tiger tank that had stalled and stood on the edge of town . . . First we thought that it would open fire. And then we charged it, and it turned out that there were no Germans inside. Later some paratroopers arrived, but there was no serious fighting in Pyatikhatki. At night we fired whenever there was any suspicion that something might be up. It turns out we had caught them off guard. The distance was . . . In any case, if you are ever in

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Savely Bass. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID UKR008.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b49v6p

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

Pyatikhatki, you will see a memorial to the liberators, the tank crews of the 5th Guards Army. After two or three days, we got a command to advance on Krivoy Rog [Kryvyi Rih]. There were no battles on the way there. We stormed into the city and crossed the Ingulets River and came against such a line of defense . . . Out tank survived, but . . . our brigade, like other forces in the area, did not manage to capture Krivoy Rog. We were then reassigned to the Apostolovo Station in order to surround a large group of Germans around Dnepropetrovsk. After capturing Apostolovo [Apostolove], which is a large railroad junction and district center, we stopped, waiting to join up with reinforcements from the south. However, this never happened. We basically cut off the railroads and roads from Dnepropetrovsk to the northwest. I still remember that we took it over on October 24, 1943, and the Germans fled Dnepropetrovsk on October 25, as I found out later. They fled because they were afraid of getting surrounded, so there were no battles to take control of Dnepropetrovsk. They left on their own. Later our unit took part in the Jassy-Kishinev Offensive. I can't tell you anything about that, because our crew, and basically our battalion, did not take part in the operation. After that we received an order to move north. At night, having switched off all radio equipment and headlights we went north toward Zvenigorodka [Zvenyhorodka], where, as I later found out, we were supposed to meet up with . . . wait . . . I think the 1st Armored Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front. In Zvenigorodka we met up and encircled the Korsun-Cherkassy Pocket. I want to say that it was partly memorable because we had to shoot Germans who were trying to break through our encirclement, and I, as a machine gunner, also took part in that.

We also took prisoners. I even had a student calendar belonging to an officer from Aachen, but I donated it to a museum. The Korsun–Shevchenkovsky [Korsun'-Shevchenkivs'kyy] Offensive was very strenuous for us. We suffered great losses, but a large number of Germans surrendered. I personally participated in the processing of German POWs. I remember that our brigade was liberating the village of Morintsy [Moryntsi], the village where Taras Grigorievich Shevchenko [a famous Ukrainian poet —Trans.] was born. I saw that tiny house where he lived when he was a serf. If you permit me, I'd like to tell you about something else that this reminded me of. When we were near Tula, we had only a few tanks left and some of us tankmen were organized into a sort of rifle battalion. We were told that we had received an order personally from Stalin to cross the front line and liberate Yasnaya Polyana [the site of Tolstoy’s residence —Trans.]. We had submachine guns and DTs, or Degtyaryov Tank, machine guns, which had been dismounted from the tanks . . . So we crossed the front line. On the way to our objective we only ran into one German supply convoy. We shot the entire convoy and also took losses because the Germans put up quite a fight. By the way, the reconnaissance chief, a Jew by the name of Lidin, was killed there. Later, because he also turned out to be from Dnepropetrovsk, I . . . We liberated Yasnaya Polyana, the home of Leo Tolstoy, and I saw that the first floor of the two-story house was used as a stable by the Germans while they lived on the second floor. However, they did not destroy or burn it and left everything as was. After the war our brigade was invited for a tour and as one of the liberators of Yasnaya Polyana, and I got to see how counts used to live. Now some of our oligarchs live even better without any noble titles. I could have told you about this in more detail, but—I apologize—I forgot that I happened to take part in this infantry

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Savely Bass. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID UKR008.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b49v6p

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN operation. After that, after the Jassy-Kishinev Offensive, I was summoned to the political department and told that since I had been awarded and since I'd fought from the first days of the war, I was being sent to a tank military school. I was sent to the Frunze Tank and Artillery School in Gorky, and after eight months I became a junior lieutenant. It happened that we were still near Moscow when we were told about victory. So on Victory Day I happened to be with my cousin, who passed away not too long ago. He had been seriously wounded and was undergoing treatment at the time. On Red Square, for the first and only time in my life, I was being tossed up and down by a crowd in my lieutenant’s uniform with my one order and two medals. I was scared that they wouldn’t catch me when I came down. In July, after some time had passed, I was sent to the Pravda Railway Station, which is on the Moscow-Yaroslavl railroad. There was a self- propelled artillery unit being formed there. I was assigned there as the commander of an SU-76 self- propelled gun and simultaneously the Komsomol organizer of that unit. I became the Komsomol organizer as a junior lieutenant and we were made part of the 192nd Rifle Division, which was stationed near Konigsberg. I’m not sure why our sixteen self-propelled guns were assigned there, but we joined to support the infantry and afterwards we were all sent to Mongolia.

We got off the train in Mongolia, in Ulaanbaatar, if I remember correctly. After that our vehicles set out across the Gobi Desert toward the border. We crossed the barren and waterless Khingan Mountains without any military encounters, but the journey was very difficult. The same is true of the desert, which did not have a single source of water. We only had the water we brought with us. The desert was called Gobi or Shamo. We were shot at twice by Japanese soldiers, who, as it turned out, were chained to the ground and given machine guns. They were on a suicide mission. They shot at us. Well you can imagine that it was quite easy to whack them, so to speak. The second battle happened when a Japanese artillery regiment fired on us after we crossed the Khingan Range. Our commanders ordered us to return fire and our aviation appeared. Soon there was nothing left of the attacking artillery regiment, in part thanks to the fact that most of our soldiers and officers had been trained and had gone through the war. And we shot well—we had good aim, I mean. And as it turned out later this was not a top-grade regiment, because I remember seeing that they were on wooden wheels, pulled by horses, apparently. The cannons were 76mm and 45mm, so quite small. After that we advanced and took the city of Kaitong. There were no more battles. In Kaitong, we were told to take up defensive positions, just in case. However, the Japanese just surrendered. They were surrendering and it was already September. That’s where we celebrated Victory Day. It was the second time we celebrated; we drank some liquor and had a rally. That’s how my war ended. Our self-propelled guns were loaded up in Kaitong at a border station called Otpor. I was offered the opportunity to continue my military studies and I went to the Engels Military-Political School in Leningrad. That’s how my war ended. After that I served in the army for thirty-two years, twenty of them in the Far East. I finished my service as the deputy commander of the 240th Tank Regiment. Then I had a heart attack and for the last two years I was the deputy director of the Ussuriysk Military Hospital. After the Engels School I became a political worker and retired into the reserves in 1972. I served for thirty-two years and because one year of combat was considered equivalent to three years of service, I was considered to

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Savely Bass. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID UKR008.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b49v6p

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN have served thirty-five years. Not everyone who was at the front had their service counted in this way because a tank could have been at the front but not taking an active role in advancing or defending. They could be in the reserves, for instance. So in the end I got credit for extra time.

—When did you receive your first medal "For Battle Merit"?

The first medal was given to me after the battle for Tula. Our crew—mechanic/driver, me, and the loader—were awarded.

—What about the second one?

I was awarded the second one at the very end of the war, after everything, in China. I was already back here, yes.

—What about the Order of the Red Star?

The Order of the Red Star was after Prokhorovka and the Korsun-Shevchenkovsky Operation. So that's that. I especially—I promised to tell you about it—value that after the Prokhorovka battle our brigade was awarded the Order of Lenin. Everyone in our brigade received awards. I don’t remember what anniversary this was, maybe the twenty-fifth . . . We were gathered in Moscow. In Moscow the participants of the Battle of Prokhorovka, because it was the largest tank battle of World War II, with 1,200 tanks fighting on both sides, I was given this badge. I am the only person in Dnepropetrovsk with this award for the Prokhorovka Battle. You can see it has the German Tiger and a T-34 above it, to symbolize our victory. I value this award particularly dearly. My participation in the battle was publicized by our local newspaper because I was the only participant of the battle from my area. I had a large front-page spread dedicated to me. That’s about all.

—The first tank where you were the radio operator had a crew of three?

Yes.

—You are Jewish, what about the other two?

The others, I don’t know. They were Russians or Ukrainians, not Jews.

—Did the fact that you were Jewish influence your relationship with them?

I can honestly say that this happened only once. We had some Uzbek in our unit who was a radio operator

Savely Bass. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID UKR008.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b49v6p

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN in our motorized infantry battalion. We used the RSB radio then. One time he came over to talk to us and told me to shut up because I was a Jew or something like that. But I can tell you with my hand over my heart that I don’t recall any anti-Semitism during the war. Maybe the fact that I spent nine years as a lieutenant colonel . . . I was a deputy commander, and they could have . . . I think my ethnicity played a role then.

—But during the war . . .

During the war I did not encounter anti-Semitism. I did not know it. For example, I did not know that the Germans were murdering Jews until the end.

—The end?

Until the last year of the war.

— Ah, of the war.

Then Ilya Ehrenburg’s article about how the Germans were targeting and murdering Jews appeared. However, I didn’t take it close to heart because it happened that I did not see any concentration camps or ghettos. You understand? I don’t want to make anything up, but this feeling of being different from other people . . . I always knew that I fought like everyone else, no worse and no better. I spent the whole war as a private and sergeant. I was only promoted to the rank of junior lieutenant toward the end of the war and was sent where? To fight Japan. I was a private for most of the war.

—Thank you very much.

You forgot to ask me how I lived after the war.

—Yes, yes after the war . . . You said that you served in the army for thirty-two years.

I served in the army for thiry-two calendar years, retired, and came to Dnepropetrovsk.

—What year was this?

It was 1972 and I was a fifty-year-old lieutenant colonel. However, during the war, or rather in 1950—no 1954—I was in the Higher Military Pedagogical Institute in Leningrad. Even though I was a good student, I had to apply three times to be accepted to the Economics Department in Leningrad. After I graduated I taught political economy as part of artillery officer training courses in Ussuriysk. Later I was made the

Savely Bass. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID UKR008.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b49v6p

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN propaganda officer and later the deputy commander of 240th Armored Regiment in Bikin. I finished my service, and since I'd had a heart attack, I served as the deputy director of the military hospital in Ussuriysk. This was a giant hospital with 1,200 beds. It was simply huge and first served as a front-line hospital. Later I moved to Dnepropetrovsk where an acquaintance was the head of the political economy department at the local university. They offered me a job and I taught political economy first at the Transportation Institute and then at the Metallurgical Institute. Later I was given a position at the Institute of Industrial Economics at the Academy of Science. When I was at the Metallurgical Institute, I defended my thesis and got an advanced degree, and then I was invited to become a research fellow at the Institute of Industrial Economics. And after working there I finally fully retired.

—When did you get married?

I got married in 1947 in Leningrad. My wife was a student in Leningrad and left with me to the Far East where I was sent in 1954 after finishing my studies. That’s when I taught the artillery officers. She spent many years with me and passed away in 1987. Three and a half year later I got remarried. I have two sons from my first marriage; both are engineers. Because we were in Ussuriysk at the time, they graduated from the Agricultural Institute. One is now an engineer and is still alive. His name is Anatoly and he is still working. The second one moved to Belarus and also worked as a lead engineer. He worked at the Institute of Animal Husbandry Mechanization and Automation. It so happened that he was murdered. We don't know why. They came to his apartment and he must have resisted. They killed him. This was in 1991. I went to his funeral. I was left with one son and three grandchildren. Now I have many great-grandchildren. I also have four great-grandchildren from my second marriage, although they are not technically mine. In total we have six—seven—great-grandchildren. That’s all.

—May God bless you all with health and good fortune.

Thank you.

—Thank you very much.

Savely Bass. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID UKR008.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b49v6p

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

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