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Galina Olkha. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID BEL046.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4595j

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

TABLE OF CONTENTS ITEM TRANSCRIPT

ENGLISH TRANSLATION 2 CITATION & RIGHTS 18

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Galina Olkha. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID BEL046.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4595j

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION —Today is November 18, 2009. We are in Brest, Belarus, meeting with a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. Please introduce yourself: tell us your name. When and where were you born? What do you remember before the beginning of the war, about your family life, parents? How did you end up in the Red Army and how were the years you spent at the front?

My name is Galina Isaakovna Olkha. My maiden name is Lina Isaakovna Lifshitz. I was born in a shtetl of Vitebsk Oblast on March 25, 1922. My parents were Jews. My father was Isaac Lifshitz. He worked in an artel. Mother, Ester Lifshitz, was a seamstress. In 1937 we arrived in Vitebsk, because when they began opening collective farms, in 1930, my father was taken: he didn’t want to give up the family cow so he could feed his four children. He did give up his horse. That horse used to be a source of livelihood. The village did not have a railroad, and when people from Leningrad [St. Petersburg] were traveling from Orsha for vacation, my father would go pick them up. So in 1931 they came to us to take our cow. Father wouldn't give it up. I held on to my dad. He was being taken away. The lieutenant, I even remember his last name, he hit me, my father couldn't forgive him for that, that he hit a child . . . He was taken. For five years, from 1931 to 1936, he was in Solovki [a labor camp on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea —Ed.].

He worked on the construction of the White Sea Canal. When he came home in 1936, people wouldn't let us live in peace. People came all the time demanding one thing or another. Father said, "Let's get to Vitebsk, because we will not be left alone as long as we are here." We left for Vitebsk. There we rented an apartment. At sixteen, I began working as an accountant at the factory KIM. I went to school and worked. The factory manufactured hosiery and textiles. The director of the factory was a Jewish woman, Chanina. When the war began, this is the main thing I remember. I want to tell you. My father was taken to dig trenches to impede the advancing tanks. So, the 29th was a weekend day. Dad was not there; my older sister was married to a KGB operative who supervised a prison in Baranovichi. We were waiting for her; the war started, she was supposed to come. My older brother worked for the railroad. He promised to send us into the rear.

But my father received a letter notifying him to appear at the enlistment office on the 8th of the month. On the 8th, the Germans were already in Vitebsk, and we left on the 6th. We got on the train . . . we boarded the train on July, and on September 22 we arrived at Buguruslan, Chkalov Oblast. I want to tell you a story. On [June] 29, I heard overhead the hum of an airplane. I came outside; we lived in an area next to the Red Church, it was a Polish neighborhood. And I saw that one small plane, one of ours, the Red Army . . . P-16 . . . later, when I completed aviation school, I learned what it was. He did not have anything to shoot with. Below him was a German [plane]; it was dropping leaflets. The German pilot started shooting, but our

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Galina Olkha. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID BEL046.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4595j

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN plane hit him with its wing. Our plane fell . . . there was a market over there . . . The German pilot parachuted out and got caught on the church. My mother told me, "Galya, go take a look, maybe you can still buy bread, we have to hurry to get to the train." I ran, but I made sure to avoid the German, so he wouldn't be able to shoot at me. I saw that he got stuck. This was June 29. I couldn’t find any bread, everything was already closed. On my way back, I saw as a military truck emerged from the Polish cemetery, our house's gate was there. The German was sitting between two KGB officers. He saw that I was a Jew. He must have been 3 or 4 meters away from me when he started screaming, "Schwein! Jüdisches Schwein." He [imitated a gun with his fingers and aimed it at me].

His hands were tied with a belt. When they came closer, I stopped. I saw the KGB men and knew not to get involved. The German spit on me. I ran home to my mother, yelling, "Mama! We must leave immediately. We will walk. Germans are almost here." She tells me, "How can we leave? Your father is not home yet, and neither is your sister. We must wait for them." Later my father rushed in and said—this was on the 3rd—that the Germans were killing the Jews. Polish Jews he encountered while digging told him they barely got away because the Germans were killing them.

But the border agents wouldn't let them through. Our ones. East Belorussia [Belarus] was liberated in 1939. However, the western region was taken by Germans, and many Polish Jews came to Vitebsk. They worked at our factory. They said that Germans killed and robbed. I started crying to my mother, "Mama, let's leave now." But around the same time, on the 3rd of the month, my sister arrived. She walked for ten days. Her feet were wrapped in towels because she wore down her shoes. She was eight months pregnant. Her husband arranged for her to be driven out of the city along with ten other people. But the driver drove them into the woods and kicked them out. They walked for ten days. Germans were already in Minsk at that time.

After she arrived, we left on the 6th. My brother was a railway man and was able to find us a stock car. We were supposed to leave somewhere. But my father received his draft notice, and he said that he couldn't leave or it would look like he was running from the front. So he stayed. We pleaded and begged him, "Papa, come with us, we will go to the front. You can check in there." Later our neighbors told us that our father was betrayed. He was part of the forty mobilized men left, but it wasn't possible to enlist anymore, there was no military presence. They started walking to Vyazma and were captured by the Germans. They said, "Jude"—they immediately saw that he was Jewish—"zurück, zurück, nach Hause." He came, and then he was betrayed. And he perished. And there were just three months left. He had escaped the Germans and joined the partisans. He used to travel to a local village where he knew the village chief—his name was Karpa—he used to visit us, and would frequently stay the night. One time when father came to the village for bread, Karpa was at the house of that villager. The villager warned my father to leave right away because the chief would give him up [to the Germans]. But my father replied, "That can't be. He knows me;

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Galina Olkha. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID BEL046.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4595j

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN he used to stay over at our house." When Karpa saw my father, he questioned him, "Isaac, why are you here? Where is your Esther, where are your children?" Father replied, "They left." Karpa asked, "And you're still alive?" And my father told him, "Why should I be dead? I'm working, helping . . ." And then he and another man, a Russian, left.

Our neighbor was walking along toward a hill. She was Russian, but she and my sister were both married to Jews. She saw my father, that they were about to shoot him. My father recognized her and pleaded, "Marusya, tell me what I did to them. Why do they want to kill me?" And she tried [to help], saying, "He has a family, leave him. I will give you my ring." But it was no use. He was shot to death. He died two and half months before the liberation. We never saw him again. All together I had eighteen relatives: father's brothers, mother's relatives. They all died. I met one relative once in the war. He was a teacher in Liozna. He told me the whole family was murdered, everyone.

I had an aunt who ran a children's home in Zaozer'ye. We had a very big lake, and in Zaozer'ye there was a children home. When the war began many Jewish children were left without parents. They were in pioneer summer camps, but then the parents fled and lost them. So I had this aunt Lyuba. Her husband, Leva Lifshits, was my father's cousin. He was the head of our textile manufacturing association. He was a good- looking, wonderful man. He would help us in times of hunger. And the Germans came. You could see the home right off the road. Germans moving out of Minsk were passing on that road. Someone told them that the children's home was run by a Jewish woman. They said to give them blood from the children for their wounded. My aunt said, "Over my dead body. I can't give you children's blood." And they shot her right there. They took the blood from the children and then shot them as well. After the war, I lived in Brest and worked as a train-car attendant. I traveled to Leningrad and Moscow for a couple of years. There I met a man once. He had the accent of someone from my hometown of Senno [Syanno]. I asked him where he was from, and he said Senno. I said I was too. And I started asking him what he remembered. He said all the Jews of the city were killed. We had fifty-four thousand Jews in Senno. They killed everyone. There was no one left.

Later I called the vital records office to ask if they had my birth certificate. I was told that there was nothing left. Our house was gone. There wasn't a single Jew in the city. Some had managed to leave, on foot. Some returned, but then left again.

We evacuated. It was me, my sister, my mother, and my brother Lyova's wife and children. My sister went into labor when Bryansk was being bombed. The bombardment was horrific. I managed to crawl under a wagon, but she couldn't. She started giving birth. A young man, around twenty years old, with an insignia with two hammers on his chest came over to help. I didn't even know what kind of troops they were. He

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Galina Olkha. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID BEL046.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4595j

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN delivered the baby. It was a girl. When the bombing ended he asked that my sister be taken along with the military hospital. Many people from the hospital train were dead, and a number were wounded again, and they were being placed into the train cars again. Finally they agreed to take her. And we left. I lost my mother. I found her in the end of September in Salovka.

My mother stayed there. Then we found our sister. She had the baby, but the baby died from hunger and was buried in that village. There were only Mordvins there. My sister worked as an accountant at a kolhoz [collective farm]. But there was no work for me, so I set out toward the city on foot. Around then, they brought in damaged tanks, and I started working at the tank repair depot, fixing tanks. but we had left home in the summer. We were used to thinking war would end quickly, especially because when we were evacuating, we had heard some Russians yell, "Jews, like rats from a ship. We'll soon come back to judge them." And then, when my mother and I got off the train and walked around that district—my sister stayed on the train because her feet were damaged—we also heard someone, probably a Jew, yell, "Jews! If you can, leave! The Germans will be here tomorrow." But they came the day after. We got back on the train and left. But when I arrived there, it was freezing cold. Winters there are -45 degrees, and I was in a summer jacket and summer shoes. We had left the winter boots in the cellar, expecting to return shortly.

I really wanted to fight. After all, I already knew that Jews were being killed. I believed . . . But as if that is all . . . Even before the war, you know how we were treated. You know it wasn't easy for us before the war. So I asked and found out that they were looking to enroll forty young women into a technical school in the south. I really wanted to get warm, because I didn't have anything. When I was painting tanks, I found an old military overcoat. So I wore it, but my feet were in the summer shoes, at -45. I went to the recruitment office and told them I wanted to go to the front. They told me I can go I if I want to. He also offered to keep me there, because they needed educated people. I told him I would freeze to death. So I ended up in K'obulet'i, it's a resort town not far from Batumi. There I studied to be a bomber mechanic and armorer. I studied there for seven months.

There were corpses coming down the sea from Sevastopol. I [didn’t see them] and jumped into the water to bathe. And there were so many corpses. I bumped into one of them and bile spilled over me. I got horrible blisters. When I was taking my exams, the girls had to feed me because my hands were bandaged up. But I passed the exams. I had to jump with a parachute three times. I managed somehow. Then I was sent to the Transcaucasian Front. First to what was once Kirovabad; now it's Ganja, an Azerbaijani city. From there I moved to Krasnodar Kray. We liberated Krasnodar, and Ust'-Labinsk. I am eighty-seven years old; it's not easy to remember all this, although my memory is still pretty good. I fought there, and later Ukraine. At first in the Salsk steppes, and later Ukraine, Moldavia [Moldova], Romania, Hungary, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. I ended the war in Bratislava.

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Galina Olkha. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID BEL046.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4595j

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

I can't say it was easy to serve. They didn’t like Jews so much. It was different for the fighting forces on the front line. But I was 30 kilometers behind the front line, because the bomber regiment where I served was always a bit behind the front line. I had to hang the bombs and load these bombs with explosive filling. I had to load the artillery guns. We had the ShKAS machine gun for aircraft. These airplanes were given to us by the Americans through the Lend-Lease program. We had an agreement with the United States that they would help us with equipment and food. After the war we were supposed to return everything that survived and pay for whatever didn’t. That’s the way it happened. Everything that was left, the Americans took back. They stopped demanding payment from us early on—the war had taken a heavy toll on us. They helped us during the war tremendously with arms and food. I still remember the meat stew and the chocolate.

Today you hear them say, I don't know how they allowed this, that Americans won the war. This is terrible to hear, especially for a war veteran, a disabled war veteran. If Americans helped us, we are grateful. Their troops landed in June 1944 in Normandy, France. By the way, we had the Normandie-Niemen unit with us. We shared an airfield in Ukraine. Of course, the Soviet Union won the war with the help of the French, American, and British forces. But they joined the fighting after we had already crossed the border into Poland and Moldavia. 1944 was the year of victories. We were marching forward, so to say now that it was them who won is, of course . . . We must thank them for their help, of course. That can't be denied.

During the war, they didn't always treat the Jews like they should have given that so many Jews perished, so many fought. Today we know that during the war when Jews were taken to ghettos, and when they made their final journey . . . like my father. He was slaughtered. It's painful to remember this. We used to have some commanders who hated Jews. And when it came to young women, they only wanted one thing. That also happened. If you resisted, your service was more difficult. I don’t want to talk about that, but I think . . . I did not commit any heroic acts, but I know that I was never late attaching the bombs and loading the guns. My planes, my unit, were never late to combat because of me. I always managed. It was hard. Today I am disabled. My legs and hand are damaged, but—I can't say that I am full of strength, I am in a wheel chair—but my head still works, and I want to live. But I never want to see the day when we have another war like that, or when the Jews are murdered like we were. I am very happy today to have a homeland, because Israel is our common homeland. Even if it is difficult here, we are never left alone, they won't let us die. My son is in Israel. He writes to me that whenever he looks at our airplanes he knows no one out there can say that Jews are not fighters. We can fight, but we don’t want to. We just want to live in peace and freedom. We want to be allowed to live. I probably said something wrong. I am a bit upset. Sometimes my blood pressure rises; I probably said something wrong. I haven't even told you half of what I have lived through. But I can't say I'm not treated well. No, I won't say that. We have the Hesed, and I know that if I die . . . they won't leave me. My sons aren't here, I am on my own. I have Bruk [the head of the Veterans' Council of Brest]. Bruk won't abandon me. I probably said something wrong. I don't know what

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Galina Olkha. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID BEL046.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4595j

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN to say.

— How often did pilots not return? Were planes often shot down?

Oh . . . it happened. But none of mine. In 1944, we were in Nevinnomyssk, in the Caucasus. From there our plans flew to Crimea. There is a peninsula called Chushka, where the Germans managed to dig in. My aunt survived the three-month occupation. Her other sister died, but she lived. She had papers that said she was Armenian, and she knew the language. I asked our commander, he was a very good man, for permission to visit my aunt during the May holidays, because I didn't know what had happened to my family. Vitebsk had been occupied, it was liberated in '44, sometime around July. I traveled there. When I arrived, I found out that many Jews did not survive, they died. They didn't survive three months. While I was away two planes from my squadron, not my unit, went down.

The Germans were well fortified on that peninsula. For me the main thing in my service was to hang the bombs and load the guns in time. When the front was already advancing quickly, we were also used as gunners. I had a double-barreled machine gun and I fired it. I don't know if I killed anyone.

—You took part in the fights?

Very rarely. I was a part of the technical and service personnel. But when we were advancing, and we had to arm the planes right away, we were put in the planes. We had machine guns that fired 1400 shots a minute. So I would take control of this gun. But this happened only when we were advancing and were short a gunner. That’s when they took us along. First we had to bring the bombs over. If the bombs were too big, sometimes would would hang 500 kilogram bombs . . . I could not do it alone. We would bring over a winch; it was a large winch. I got help. They'd come and help me wind it. That’s how my arm was torn. I am missing the bone between the shoulder and the elbow. I worked very hard. I didn't do anything heroic. I did my job. When I had my third son, I couldn’t even breastfeed him because I could not hold him. My arms and legs hurt so much. But if, God forbid, it happened again, of course I would do it all over again.

—You were trained to jump with a parachute?

Just to pass the exams. We jumped out of an airplane. We had a small plane. It would carry twenty people. It was a transport plane of some sort. But it was only to pass the exam. First, they taught us how to shoot at other planes, at moving targets. They used to hang a large mattress and we would shoot at it from the ground. It was enough. I left the army in August 1946.

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Galina Olkha. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID BEL046.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4595j

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

—Where were you on Victory Day?

I was in Czechoslovakia, in Bratislava. We heard lots of gunfire, but we knew that a German unit has crossed the front line, and we figured that they were approaching, because there was so much gunfire. Our regiment was a night regiment. During the day we took care of other matters—we hung the bombs and loaded the ammunition. And then suddenly we found out that the war was over! And you will never guess whom I met there. Three days later, in Czechoslovakia, I met a Jewish family. I never saw Jews there before. It turns out that they worked at a rock quarry for the Nazis. The war ended and they returned home. At some point they had a store there. They found it destroyed, but our commander allowed them to reopen it. I came to the store to buy shoes and stockings. They marveled at me when they saw me in my aviation uniform. They would say, "A Jew! And you are in the air force! We were not allowed to join the army." I really wanted to talk to them. One day they told me they are leaving for Israel. Well, at that point Israel still did not exist, it was Palestine . . . When their daughter got married, they invited me to the wedding. I got leave. They gave me a dress and bought some shoes at the store. I went to the wedding. They also had a son. And they said, "Lina, come with us." But I said no. I was just fighting for my homeland, for the Soviet Union. How could I leave? They said they wanted me to marry their son and travel with them.

Later I learned from another family that they worked very hard there. They survived malaria; there was no bread . . . I don’t know if they are alive now. I will tell you what happened in Hungary. There is God above me, it seems. At one point I was placed in a home with a Hungarian family for a time. The house was divided in two halves. A mother and her disabled son lived there. People said that when the Americans were dropping bombs, he was caught under one and got badly hurt. He walked awkwardly on hands and feet. But he knew a little Russian. And I was staying in a different room, the other half. One night I came home close to the morning and fell asleep. And then it seemed like someone talking above me, there was a humming noise. I opened my eyes and saw the mother standing over me. A tall Hungarian woman. She was coming, holding a kitchen knife. I wanted to speak but couldn't say a word. I was scared. At that moment the son came crawling out of his bedroom, yelling at me to leave. I grabbed whatever I could and, still barefoot, left. This was not long before the end of the war. We were already in Hungary. We went through many different cities, they were so difficult . . . In shirt, I managed to survive. Later on I was under terrifying bombardment. The whole time I stood guard over my plane so that it would not be set on fire. I held the fire extinguisher for four hours. My feet were frozen. But I lived. Now I am eighty-seven years old.

—Where did you go after demobilization?

I went back to Vitebsk for a month, but our house was destroyed. My father was gone, my brother was gone. While he was on his way back, he led a whole train, he was hit in the head, I have his picture somewhere. He was hit with a piece of shrapnel and died. I heard that you could buy bread and find a job

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Galina Olkha. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID BEL046.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4595j

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN in Brest. My mother went to live with her brother in Saratov. He had four daughters, but no wife. She looked after the cow. I went to Brest and there found a job first as an accountant in a restaurant on a railway station. [I thought I would at least have] a hot plate of soup there. Four months later I married another veteran of the war. He came there after demobilization. He was a major. For a while I worked as a train conductor. Later on I had terrible back pains. Some drunk passenger pushed me out of the train. I hurt my leg and became disabled. I started getting a pension as a second-degree invalid, and then first degree. Now I live here. I am a bit embarrassed that I don’t speak well.

—You speak very well.

It's just that I am alone all day long. Although, four times a week I am visited by a woman from Hesed who helps me. I would like to read you a poem, one I don’t think you have heard before. About Jews. The poem was written by Arkady Khait. He died not long ago. They were two brothers, the Khaits. He died recently in Germany. He emigrated there, and lived there . . . Are you recording? You are so handsome.

—Hold on a second, I will get my wife in here.

Jews. Russian talents,

Scattered all over the earth.

We are all somewhat emigrants,

In Berlin, Prague, and Moscow.

We are home everywhere, and nowhere,

And each is ready to run again,

As soon as he hears

The familiar call, "Get the Jews!"

They make up tales about us,

That we live in the wrong way,

That we look down on everyone,

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Galina Olkha. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID BEL046.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4595j

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

That we sell Russia to the masons.

They also say that we worship

The golden calf,

And that at night we sit at home

Adding blood to the matzo.

The Jews are always to blame for everything,

If there is no butter, if cheese has disappeared,

If the heat is not working well,

And if the bus is late.

When it's snowing or raining,

Or communism hasn't arrived,

Or someone really wants to drink,

Zionism is always to blame.

For hundreds years

Amid worries and concerns

Our god-chosen people

Are strangers to everyone in the world.

Jews, Russian talents,

Hailing from Zhitomir and Moscow,

Scientists and musicians,

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Galina Olkha. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID BEL046.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4595j

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

Pensioners and doctors,

Let us live,

Beautifully, long, and earnestly.

And if someone dislikes us,

Then let it be, what else is new.

Let us fear no one

Let us not wake up in the middle of the night,

Let us laugh joyously

To spite various scum.

And during these wild times

I repeat wholeheartedly:

Thank you, for living,

Thank you, for being here with me.

And another:

I was young soldier,

A guardsman with no awards,

A battle today and a battle tomorrow,

And there is no way back.

I remember for a few minutes,

Above a precipice by the Desna,

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Galina Olkha. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID BEL046.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4595j

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

I found the time to take a nap

Under the watch of the commander

Short, heavenly dreams,

But my wonderful sleep was interrupted.

The commander said that

A battalion is fighting by the river

And we must help our boys,

Throw in some firepower.

And his eyes are somber like a dream,

Staring into me.

My heart began to burn,

But, I received the order,

I offered my right shoulder,

Then left shoulder,

For that ammunition.

Here I am walking through the woods,

Not feeling my legs.

God forbid I get captured by Germans.

Will God help me.

But I caught the shimmer of the river

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Galina Olkha. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID BEL046.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4595j

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

And I could see into the distance,

And the boys look on silently,

Wish sadness in their eyes.

I dropped my cargo and wiped off my sweat,

Standing in the dust alive.

The commander has no words.

His warriors, his stronghold

Fell down by the river.

Suddenly someone wheezed:

"The little Zhid brought us bullets . . ."

And stepped in front of me,

Angry and squinting.

. . .

He was squeezing the gun anxiously,

And his dirty finger on the trigger,

Was shaking like mad.

And I, I was only eighteen years old,

I haven't even lived yet,

In the heat I cursed his mother

And all his relatives.

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Galina Olkha. Full, unedited interview, 2009

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ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

In one swift move I bared my chest,

C'mon and shoot, you bastard.

Something was moved inside him,

And he stepped back.

I walked through the field

Leaving a light imprint on the stalks.

Well, war is war,

But the bitterness burned in me

For many years.

What I carried away from my native fields

Was that being a Jew is a sin in Russia.

He may be a genius,

He may be a prophet,

The mark of a Jew still burns.

—Who is the author of this poem?

I forgot his last name. He is one of our Minsk veterans. I have it. I will give it to you. There were a few words that I got wrong. I remembered them after.

—Did your sing songs during the war?

Of course! Whenever there was a day we weren't flying, I would sing. Not Jewish songs though. At the time you couldn't do that.

Galina Olkha. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID BEL046.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4595j

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

—Which songs were your favorite?

I always liked "The Girl in the Military Boots." If you want, I can sing it for you.

Singing:

The enemy burned down his home . . .

[Olkha continues singing but has trouble remember the entire song.]

Let's not try to remember [the rest] now. I want to sing a Jewish song. [She sings in Yiddish.]

—What is this song about?

You don’t know?

—Everyone should know.

This is about the love of a young woman for a young man. She used to work late. This was still back when women worked for their master, and they worked ten hours a day. On her way home from work she sees that her beloved, whom she thought of marrying, is tying a scarf she had given him around another woman's neck. She comes home and tells her mother that she will never see that scarf again, and her daughter will never have happiness. Basically, it's about lost love. Yiddish libe. Do you know this song we used to sing at weddings . . . Is she Russian? [The camera operator.]

—Yes.

Please forgive me for speaking Yiddish. I studied in a Jewish school. Finished a Jewish school, eight grades. Afterwards I wanted to enter ninth grade, but they closed all Jewish schools. Mikhoels was killed . . . in '48. This was already after the war.

Here, I [didn't really know any] Jews. I married a Russian man. The kids didn't especially want to learn the language. Today, the one who is now in Israel writes and speaks excellent Hebrew. But I don’t know Hebrew. When I was little my father used to tell me, "Don't be lazy, learn Hebrew, it will come in handy." I know only a few words in Hebrew. No English, no Hebrew. Dummy.

— Sing us another song in parting. In any language.

Galina Olkha. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID BEL046.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4595j

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

Which song . . . how about this one?

[singing]

The days passed, drums thundered,

People were intoxicated with willpower and combat.

We marched proudly with guns in our hands,

We marched as units, we marched as a family.

Right next to us, in a leather jacket,

In large, torn military boots,

Marched on a proud female figure,

Marched on a young woman with a rifle in her hands.

There was a battle, a bitter, bloody battle,

A deadly battle in a terrible blizzard.

When morning came, her frozen body

Was found in the snow by a fallen flag.

No one knew, why she was here, or where she came from,

The silent question was on each man's mind.

But those who knew her, will for a long time remember

That young woman in military boots.

That young woman who died in battle.

—Thank you very much.

Galina Olkha. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID BEL046.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4595j

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

Galina Olkha. Full, unedited interview, 2009

ID BEL046.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4595j

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

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