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Lazar Ulitsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID STP051.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4td9n98r

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

TABLE OF CONTENTS ITEM TRANSCRIPT

ENGLISH TRANSLATION 2 CITATION & RIGHTS 17

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Lazar Ulitsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID STP051.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4td9n98r

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION —Today is September 23, 2008. We are speaking to a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. First, please introduce yourself. Please tell us about your family, the school you attended, your life before the war, how you joined the army, and about your wartime years. Please, go ahead.

My name is Lazar Naftulovich Ulitsky. I was born on January 12, 1923, into a public servant's family in Belaya Tserkov [Bila Tserkva], Kiev [Kyiv] Oblast. I was the fourth and youngest child in my family. My oldest sister was twice my age. She graduated from the Kiev Finance and Economics Institute and was the director of the Planning Department at the Chubar Plant. I am not sure if this plant still exists. The second oldest was my brother who was studying in some kind of technical school in Kharkov [Kharkiv]. I do not remember the name. My other brother was three years older than me and went to school. My mother got sick with septicemia after I was born and was sick for a long time. She died in 1937 in the Academician Strazhevsky’s Clinic in Kiev. Her diagnosis was nephritis, a chronic progressive kidney disease. We moved to Kiev. My father, my brother, and I moved to Kiev, where my oldest sister lived, in 1937. We lived on Kuznechnaya Street, which later was renamed Gorky Street. There I entered the eighth grade of the Ukrainian Secondary School No. 135, which was not far from the university on Karavaevskaya Street, I believe. You had to go down the hill along the fence of the botanical garden, and we slid on our school bags to school in the winter. I finished tenth grade at School No. 235. I was a Komsomol organizer at school. Then . . . I graduated with straight As and was accepted to the Sanitary and Hygiene Department of the 1st Kiev Medical institute without any exams. I was elected the Komsomol organizer of my group there as well. I was a good student. However, somewhere around early April 1941, the Komsomol Committee called me into the office and asked, “Do you know that clouds are gathering over our country?" Clouds as in war, clouds of war. I said, “Yes, I read the newspapers.” “The Komsomol Committee has discussed this issue and would like to ask you to talk to your group’s Komsomol members and convince them to volunteer for the army. Of course, you need to choose the healthiest ones that are physically fit to enlist.” I realized it was an order rather than a request and it was impossible to argue or to hesitate. I realized I had a choice between putting my Komsomol ticket on the table and following the committee’s recommendation. I spoke to people and talked three more people into joining. We wrote to the military recruitment office volunteering to enlist into the army.

It was in early April. On June 22, we started the day as usual. We lived on Reitarskaya Street in Kiev, which was behind Saint Sophia Cathedral and close to the Dnieper and Bohdan Khmelnytsky Square. That morning, around 8 o’clock, my father, my older brother, and I were having breakfast. We lived on the first floor. Suddenly we heard loud noises similar to explosions or thunder. My father said, “Kids, let's go see what is going on there.” We came out and saw planes in the air. My father said, “I am so tired of these endless military exercises and maneuvers of the Kiev Military District.” We were about to turn around and

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Lazar Ulitsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID STP051.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4td9n98r

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN go back when my father saw and pointed out the bombs that were dropped from the planes onto the bridge across the Dnieper. It was not far from our house. No more or even less than a kilometer away from us. He said, “This is not an exercise. The war has started. Let’s quickly finish breakfast.” I remembered this phrase. We went home, ate breakfast, and at noon Molotov announced on the radio that the Germans crossed the border and started the war against the Soviet Union without a declaration. Several days later I went to the military commissariat, since I already submitted my application to enlist. They looked at my application, registered me right on the spot, and gave me a referral to the Kharkov [Kharkiv] Medical Military School. I got there by the end of June. It took some time to fill out the paperwork, issue orders, collect information, take care of uniforms, and so on. We took an oath. On July 3 the order was issued to enlist us as cadets of the Kharkov Medical Military School. My military service started on July 3, 1941. We started studying. Because of the war, it took us only six or seven months to finish a three-year school. However, we did not graduate in Kharkov. At first, when the Germans captured Kiev and were drawing close to Kharkov, we were transformed into a rifle regiment and sent to defend Kharkov. We were digging anti-tank counterscarps to prevent tanks from entering the city. We spent about a month at the construction of defensive works outside of Kharkov. Then suddenly it was announced, I don't remember the date, that in accordance with the order of the Supreme Commander all Kharkov schools—not just medical military schools, all schools—were to be evacuated to the east.

We returned from the defense line. There was already shooting and we heard that the enemy was approaching. Still, we prepared the defense line and built protective works for our retreating troops. We were sent back to the school. The entire school, down to the cabinets, was loaded onto the train overnight. Library books, cabinets, everything was loaded onto the train. We left Kharkov at dawn and went to Baku. German planes bombed us along the way, but we were lucky. Nobody was injured and we reached Baku safely. There we got off the train and were told to wait for a steamship from Krasnovodsk that was to cross the Caspian Sea. We boarded the ship and went to Ashgabat, where we unloaded everything from the ship to our permanent dislocation and resumed studying. We studied for a total of six or seven months. Then we took our final exams, obtained the title “military medic,” and went to Moscow to receive appointments to different fronts. We spent no longer than three or four days in the Central Military Medical Directorate in Moscow. After an interview, I received an appointment to go to the Kalinin Front, to the 150th Stalin Division made up of Siberian volunteers, which was near the town of Bely, in the vicinity of Smolensk. And it so happened that this division—it was called the 150th Stalin Division at the beginning of the war, but was later renamed the 22nd Stalin Guards Rifle Division. The entire corps that had three other divisions as well was named after Stalin, if I am not mistaken. This entire corps was encircled. When I arrived to the 469th Rifle Regiment of the 250th Division, the total number of soldiers was no greater than 300-350, even though there had been over 10,000 soldiers before it joined the fighting. When they went into that one battle, the number was greater than 3,000. The medical workers had to get out of the encirclement along with the rest of the regiment. When I came there and started to meet the team, I was very impressed to meet Maria Kalinovna Pavlenko, the commander of the stretcher-bearer platoon. There

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Lazar Ulitsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID STP051.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4td9n98r

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN was always a platoon of stretcher bearers in a medical company of the regiment, which carried the injured first to a battalion aid station and then to a regiment aid station. After receiving first aid, the injured people were transported to a medical-sanitary battalion.

Anyhow, that Maria Kalinovna Pavlenko not only broke out of the encirclement by herself—she was the platoon commander—but also evacuated ten carts with the injured. Her name was put forward for the title Hero of the Soviet Union, but medics rarely received this award in 1942 and 1943. It almost never happened, so she received the Order of Lenin instead. She was the only woman in our division who had the Order of Lenin. The second remarkable woman we had was Olga Zhilina, who had the Order of the Red Banner and the Order of the Red Star. She also evacuated many injured soldiers from the encirclement and also acted admirably while in the encirclement. There was another combat medic, Lida Shcherbinina, who was also a hero. Later on, when our regiment became a Guards regiment, she came to me and said, “Commander, I want to join the sniper company.” I asked her why she wanted that given that she was a medic, and she said that the Germans had killed her father and older brother and she wanted to avenge them. She was an excellent worker and I did not want to let her go. I told her that our regiment aid station received up to 600 wounded every three days—I wrote about that in my front diary—but had only two or three doctors and four aid workers. Imagine how hard we had to work to not only dress wounds and administer painkillers to everybody, but also perform blood transfusions in certain extreme cases. We had a shortage of doctors and medical aides for such an enormous, difficult job. She responded that if I didn't let her go, she would then go directly to the head of the regiment’s headquarters. I told her she could do that, but that I would not let her go because I did not have enough help. She talked to him and he called me and said, “Listen, she will go anyway. I know the character of these Siberian women. If she decided to go, she will go. Please, just let her do it.” After his call I had to let her go and she became a sniper. Her story did not end well. She received a grave injury and was airlifted to a military hospital in Leningrad, where she died after the surgery. That's the kind of medical workers we had. I can name others, but these women were heroes, real heroes. To give you some idea . . . In 1987 I went to Novosibirsk to my division’s veteran reunion. They pointed out a street named after the combat medic Olga Zhilina. It was rare to have streets named after medical workers back then.

There are many stories like that. Besides, as I already told you, we received 600 workers every 3 days, which meant 200 people a day. We had to not only provide medical help, but also give them food and drink. We gave them sandwiches and, most importantly, hot tea, especially during winter when we needed to fight hypothermia. I am not sure whether I should describe any specific episodes. When I came to the regiment, after the encirclement, we received replenishment soldiers, were allowed to rest a bit, and then were sent to liberate Velikiye Luki. There was a 172 height where the Germans were. The head doctor of the regiment ordered me to start moving toward that height so that we could provide medical help for the injured without any delay, in 30 minutes to an hour. There was a small shed there—a shed, not a house—and

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Lazar Ulitsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID STP051.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4td9n98r

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN we used it to set up our front-line aid station. We received many injured soldiers. I remember one episode . . . The Germans were at the height, had a good view, so they had an easy line of fire. A shell hit the corner of the shed and literally razed it to the ground. Thankfully, none of the injured who were in the shed were hit and killed. When our troops took the 172 height and the fighting was over . . . By the way, our veterans told me there are monuments, obelisks, installed there to commemorate the Siberian soldiers who died in those battles. We had an observation post at the height after it was taken and our regiment commander was there. I got up there and saw endless fields covered with bodies. There were so many. There were many broken machines. The thing was, it was difficult to evacuate the injured from the battlefield. We had four or five, and never more than six, carts. Can you imagine? I do not remember the exact number now, but we had a very large percentage of gravely injured soldiers and only five or six carts that belonged to our medical company. So what did we do? We evacuated the injured by loading them onto supply delivery carts when they went back after bringing supplies to the front. That way we could evacuate more people to the rear. We sent them to the medical-sanitary battalion from our front aid station, as well as from our main aid station that was about 1-1.5 kilometers away from the front line. I wrote down in my diary that cart drivers stopped and took the injured only at gunpoint. They were in a hurry to go back and deliver more munitions. Do you understand? They were not allowed to have any delays, so having to load up the wounded was a problem. Loading those with serious wounds onto a cart took time. The only way to persuade them to take the wounded and bring them to the rear was to fire a gun into the air, to show that they had no choice but to do it. That was what we had to do.

Then our regimental aid station came under friendly mortar fire. When we were advancing . . . When the regiment was advancing, we were only 200-300 meters away, behind the last, the third, battalion, in order to set up quickly and provide help. When a regiment was on the defensive, we were about 2 kilometers away from the front. That's how it was usually set up. During a march, we went in a column along with the regiment. If there were Germans ahead, the battalions went into the battle and we moved back a little and set up the aid station. That's how it was. Here's something interesting. Sometimes our regimental aid station was directly under fire. Mortar fire. Here is how we set up our regimental aid station: we had an intake facility, a dressing room, and an evacuation department. We had such functional facilities for triaging the wounded and so on. The platoon of stretcher-bearers went to the front to carry the wounded back. Then we also had dog-drawn sleds. There was one regiment with dog-drawn sleds in the army. The service of those dogs was invaluable. Each sled had one driver. Two sleds followed his lead. These sleds evacuated the injured from the battlefield as well. I want to tell you about what happened when we were under the mortar fire. It was not far from the front line, 800 meters or less. We were in a tent, a standard first aid tent, which had the dressing tables for bandaging the wounded. When a shell flew over the tent, we could predict whether it would hit close to the tent or far from it from its sound. We had so much practice with that that we could tell. So that day we were working in our tent and suddenly heard a shell flying right over our heads. I realized it would explode near the tent and wanted to see what happened—we had horses in special dugout covers to minimize the injuries from the shelling. We had our

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Lazar Ulitsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID STP051.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4td9n98r

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN horses there and our cook Shura, a young Siberian woman, was sitting there cooking. There was a fire, a hearth, and she was making dinner. I wanted to make sure all was well over there. I jumped out but our combat medic Alla Andreeva, also a hero who had an award, was ahead of me. She was a split second ahead of me, so I ended up behind her. Suddenly . . . she was standing there and started falling. Shell fragments hit her hip. She fell and I caught here. If I was first, that would have happened to me. We carried her into the tent, dressed the wounds, and sent her to the medical-sanitary battalion. I looked at our cook, Shura, who was close to the fire pit, and saw blood streaming from her chest. It was literally streaming. We also picked her up immediately, brought her inside, provided first aid, and sent her to the medical-sanitary battalion. I do not know what happened to her after that. She was later transferred to the front hospital. Nobody knows what happened to her after that. Several horses were injured as well. They wanted to run away, but could not as they were tied down. There were pools of blood underneath the horses. So that's something that happened. There was another interesting episode. The regiment's commander called me and said, “Take your medical company and move forward immediately down such and such road. Get a map.” I got a map. He told me the details about the road we should take. We would be joining combat right away. I raised the company. I had a horse named Ultra. I was riding Ultra at the front, and behind me were the carts, some lightly injured soldiers who hadn't been sent off yet and who could walk, and then the personnel. It was getting dark. As a rule, we tried to avoid moving at daytime and always tried to move at night. I was on my horse about 30 meters ahead of the company. Suddenly, I heard somebody speaking German in the bushes. I studied German in school, and even though I didn't speak it well, I could immediately tell it was German. I turned around. If we kept moving for 50 more meters or even less, we would have definitely entered German territory. Why did our regiment commander send us down that road? I guess the Germans were not there at the time of his order, but got there later somehow. I turned everybody around and we went down another road, which ran parallel, to catch up with our battalions. These things happened.

There is another difficult story. During the two years that I was in that regiment, we buried for regiment commanders. Four commanders died from wounds. Can you imagine how many company and platoon commanders died? We had enormous losses. Sometimes it seemed we had nobody left to fight. To illustrate this point about the shortage of personnel . . . Once I called the chief of staff and asked him to send me a detachment of soldiers to dig hideouts for the injured and the medical staff. He said he would. After some time, the sergeant major reported that the soldiers arrived. I told him to line them up, and they did. I saw that most soldiers were the normal age, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, except for one soldier, who looked like a grandfather. I was nineteen then. He was forty-nine. I told the sergeant major to send ten soldiers to work, and asked the older one to come to my dugout to speak with me. He came in and said, without giving me a chance to speak, “Commander, I will work the same as others.” I said that I did not mean that he would not, I just wanted to know what his profession was. He said, “Before the war I was the chief surgeon in the hospital of the Transcaucasian Military District.” I asked, “How did you end up here?” The man, who looked like he was Georgian, said, “This is what happened. It was my birthday. A

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Lazar Ulitsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID STP051.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4td9n98r

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN group of men got up from the table and went into the kitchen. I told a joke that mentioned Stalin. Two days later the tribunal summoned me and gave me a ten-year sentence without the right of correspondence. When the war began, I was first sent to a penal company, a penal battalion. In the penal battalion, they asked us to raise our hand if we wanted to atone for our transgression against our Motherland with our blood and go to the front. I raised my hand. I was sent to a regiment and ended up alongside young soldiers.” So that was his story. I thought, chief surgeon of a hospital, the district hospital of the Transcaucasian Military District . . . No, I could not let him go. There is a shortage of physicians, let alone surgeons, and he was an expert. I called the chief of staff and said, “Comrade major, thank you for sending me the detachment, but there is among them a very experienced surgeon, a district chief surgeon. Please let me keep him in the regiment's aid station.” He said, “You must be crazy! There's nobody left to fight, nobody to shoot, and you want me to give you a soldier.” I tried to persuade him, saying that he would save thousands of injured soldiers. He started swearing but finally agreed to let him stay. "To hell with you." So I kept him. Later I put him forward for his first rank, lieutenant of the medical service. I left the regiment—I am nearing the end of this story—and later found out what happened to that Georgian man whom I called to my dugout, Chelidze. That was his last name, Chelidze. I wrote about this in my wartime diary. His fate is sad, very sad. Here is what happened. I left to go to the Leningrad Academy—I will later talk about that. I found out about what happened to Chelidze from my battlefield friends with whom I kept in touch. They wrote me about what happened in one of the letters. Doctor Chelidze and Captain Krylov, the rear deputy commander, received an order to go on a reconnaissance mission to choose a new location for the regiment's aid station. They rode off on their horses on this mission, but neither returned. Everybody was very sad. People started thinking that Chelidze might have switched sides and joined the Germans, or was angry with the Soviet government . . . There were such fears and suspicions. But a few days later, the company received an order to relocate and was moving along the edge of a forest clearing. Suddenly people yelled out, because they saw the bodies of Krylov and Chelidze next to each other. They stumbled into a German trap of some sort. That was what happened. That was that man’s fate.

I do not know how I survived, because when I first came to the regiment and saw that less than 300 out of 3,000 came out of the encirclement, I thought that none of us would return home. That the war was so devastating that nobody would survive. I decided to keep a diary, thinking that somebody might find my diary some day and learn something from it. That was my motivation for writing things down. Of course, I did not write when our forces were advancing or when we received many wounded soldiers. But when we took defensive positions and were stationed 2-3 kilometers away from the front line, and there was time and low numbers of the wounded, I wrote down the events of the previous few days. Once an orderly ran into our tent. I still remember his last name—Kholodov. We all called him, “Dad.” He was a fifty- or fifty-one- year-old Siberian man. He ran in and said, “Company Commander!” He always called me "company commander" rather than "Guards lieutenant." This was wrong, because you're suppose to use the rank, not the position. This was the Siberian regiment comprised of volunteers from Siberia. They were completely unfamiliar with career military rankings and simply said what felt right to them or what was easiest.

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Lazar Ulitsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID STP051.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4td9n98r

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

“Company Commander, the head of the division’s sanitary service is coming.” The head of the division’s sanitary service was a God-like figure to the commander of the medical-sanitary battalion. He was on the same level as a regiment or division commander. I jumped out of the dugout and saw the major, the head of the division’s sanitary service, and his orderly riding toward me. The major looked at me and said, “Do you have a secondary education?” I said that not only that, but I also managed to finish the first year of the Kiev Medical Institute before the war. “Oh!” He turned to his aide and said, “What do you think? Will he do?” He answered, “Probably.” I ask, “Comrade Major, will I do for what?” He said, “Here is the thing. The order came from the Supreme Commander to send all military doctors with secondary education to Leningrad Military Medical Academy for examinations.” This happened so suddenly. I asked what I was supposed to do.

—What year was that?

This was in the beginning of April 1944. I brought a newspaper that described all this. They wrote about me here in St. Petersburg. The materials are in there. So I asked what I had to do. He said I had to transfer my command and to report to my commander that I was being sent to the Academy on the orders of the division commander. That's all. But first, at 4 p.m. the next day, I needed to go to a village about 10 kilometers away from the front line to take a test that would be administered by the director of the army's medical service, a colonel. All other army medical doctors would be there as well. Well, I had my horse, Ultra. The next day, I got on the horse and galloped the 10 kilometers to the village. The colonel who was the director of the medical service came out. It was reported to him that sixteen medical doctors had gathered in accordance with his order. He said, “Okay, I am going to test you to see whether anyone is worthy of going at all. Who can recite a poem? Any poem. Anybody?” There was silence. No one said anything. I did not want to show off, so I kept silent as well, even though I knew several poems by heart. I even knew one poem in German in addition to the Russian ones. A couple more minutes passed in silence. It was getting uncomfortable. I shyly raised my hand. He said, “Okay, Guards Lieutenant. What do you remember? What can you tell us?”

I said,

“Tatyana sleeps.

But wonders come to her in dreams:

She wanders through a snowy vale

Wrapped in mist and gloom, it seems

Hidden from the world: while pale,

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Lazar Ulitsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID STP051.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4td9n98r

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

Among the snowdrifts, roars

A seething torrent, foaming, pours

Into the shadows, still the same,

A thing the winter cannot tame.”

[Translator Note: excerpt from Eugene Onegin by A. Pushkin]

This had the effect of, well, not a bomb, but at least a landmine exploding.

He asked for my last name. I said, “Ulitsky.” He turned to the orderly and said, “This one will go. Put Ulitsky down.” He asked a few more questions and selected a total of four doctors out of sixteen. When we came to Leningrad we realized that there was a nephew of the director among those who were selected. This became known later. However, the other three were straight from the regiment, like me. We came to Leningrad. The Academy had been evacuated to Samarkand. They decided to select a new group of cadets for a front-line [medicine] course that would start in September. They gathered them in Leningrad. The Academy was about to return to Leningrad. In the meantime, Captain-Engineer Dzhanelidze was sent over. He was the son of the academician Dzhanelidze, a prominent surgeon, whom I later came to know very well and whom I visited many times. Here is what happened. We lived on . . . what was the name of the street . . . there was Klinicheskaya and another one—close to the Finland Train Station, where the otolaryngology department, among other things, is located. There was a gynecology department there, but it was empty because the Academy was mostly in Samarkand. The entire big building was empty. There were 700 young people of my age gathered there from all over the Soviet Union. All had a secondary education. They told us we would spend three months refreshing what we learned at school—in the eighth, ninth, and tenth grade—and then take the entrance exams. The passing score was 4.6 or higher. Many teachers had already returned to Leningrad and we began studying with them. Then, around the 20th or 25th of August, the entrance exams were held. They were proper exams based on the tenth-grade curriculum. I passed the exams with the average grade of 5. Those who scored 4.2 or 4.4 were not admitted. The very next day, they were sent to the Medical Administration of the Leningrad Front to receive their subsequent appointment. Out of 700, 107 entered the Academy. There are five people left from our year in Leningrad. Most recently, about two months ago, Selivanov passed away. He was my best friend and his was the most recent funeral . . . Life is so short. I entered the Academy. At the end of the first year, I took the exam. There were two, one in the winter and one in the summer. I got a 5 on both exams. As a result of this, I became a recipient of the Stalin Scholarship, which amounted to 1,000 rubles. I also received money as an officer, because I was Guards Lieutenant at the front, and I arrived to the Academy with that rank. We had officers, military school cadets, and regular soldiers among those who took the

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Lazar Ulitsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID STP051.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4td9n98r

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN entrance exams. Many children of generals and academicians studied with me as well. You know, this was such a time that every parent tried to send their child to that school. The smaller percentage of students came from the front, while the larger percentage was from the inner districts of the Far East. I received the Stalin Scholarship, which was an additional 1,000 rubles to the 2,000 I received as an officer. So I was able to send money to my parents and my brother and had a very comfortable life myself. I would not say this was a whole lot of money, but I didn't need very much. I received that scholarship for five years straight. I graduated in 1949. That was a terrible time of the fight with cosmopolitanism and the Leningrad case, when all the higher-ups were imprisoned. Those were terrible times. I was a war veteran and a Stalin Scholarship recipient, but this was a time when you could be sent anywhere, even places like the Kuril Islands. I was appointed as the chief physician of a mechanized regiment in Primorye, close to Vladivostok. This was about 60 kilometers from Vladivostok in the village of Barabash. I became the chief physician of the regiment and served on the Manchurian border for three years. During that time, I was able to take a neurology course in the regional hospital. I really liked neurology and when I was leaving the Academy, Professor Stepan Ivanovich Karchikyan, who was a major general and treated me very well, wrote a letter for me. He wanted to keep me in the department, but it was impossible. Can you imagine them letting a Jewish man stay in the department? Things like that were impossible in 1949 in any institute. He wrote a letter to the head of the regional medical service, saying, “Please help him start working as a neurologist and I guarantee he will be and excellent specialist.”

I first attended a special section in his department, and that worked in my favor, because just a year later I was sent to the Ussuriysk Regional Hospital to take a six-month neurology course and develop a primary specialization. After that I returned to my regiment because no order came in. However, I received an appointment commensurate with my specialization in about six months. I was assigned to Vladivostok to work at the Oceanic Military Sanatorium. It was a beautiful place. Blyukher had built the main building of the sanatorium. I became the head of the Neurology Department and worked there for many years, for eight or nine years. After that Khrushchev began to disperse the army and 200,000 people were discharged, including us . . . Those who had military ranks—I was a colonel because I was the department head, similar to the director of the hospital and his deputies—were discharged. Only the civilians stayed. I was sent to the Khabarovsk District Hospital as chief resident. We received a good three-bedroom apartment and the conditions were nice. Then, in about two years, the district’s chief neuropathologist was diagnosed with a severe form of tuberculosis and was sent for an eight-month-long treatment. I became the Far East Military District’s chief neuropathologist. After that, various things happened. A year later somebody wrote to me from Moscow to ask whether I would agree to become the chief neuropathologist of the Transbaikal Military District. My wife, who spent sixteen years in the Far East with me, while I spent seventeen, told me, “You know, I cannot take this any longer. Sixteen years is enough and we should try to get out of here. Khabarovsk or Chita—it is all the same to me. I want to be in Saint Petersburg.” Well, it was Leningrad back then. In short, I declined their offer. I received another telegram a month later: “We offer you the position of chief neuropathologist of the North Caucasus Military District in Rostov-on-Don.” This

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Lazar Ulitsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID STP051.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4td9n98r

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN was better than Chita, so I agreed and we moved to Rostov, where I worked for four years. Then my wife said that her father was getting very old—her mother had died early—and asked me to go back, at least to see him. I began to ask for demobilization from the army. I was only forty-seven years old and nobody wanted to see me go. The director of the hospital in Rostov told me, “No way, you still have years of work ahead of you. It is too early, so I cannot let you go.” I said, “May I then speak with the director of the district medical service about it?” He agreed, so I went to the director who had just been appointed to a general- level position in Chita. He was in great spirits. He said no at first, but then I said I will come back in six months and he’ll need to let me go eventually . . . He said, “Okay, to hell with you. You are lucky I have the order to go to Chita in my pocket” and wrote, “Allowed to be discharged.” I was demobilized, and we exchanged the apartment for one in Leningrad and moved. I left the army in 1970.

—May I ask you a couple of questions? You have two Orders of the Red Star. Did you receive these awards due to the number of years you served or during the war?

This one I received during the war. I have pictures of myself as a nineteen-year-old and I have the Order of Red Star and the Guards Pin.

—What episode led to this award?

It was for the liberation of Velikiye Luki, which recently celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of liberation from fascism and occupation. I even received a special invitation to come to the celebration. There is a man there whose father used to serve in our division. That man, himself a colonel, leads educational activities and organizes events. I just remembered his name—Bondarenko. He told me they were getting ready to make me an Honorable Citizen of Velikiye Luki.

—Do you have the medal “For Courage”?

No, “For Battle Merit.”

—Did medical workers have personal weapons?

Of course.

—A submachine gun?

No. I had a trophy pistol. You know what I brought with me to the Leningrad Academy from the front? It is very interesting. I always loved chess, played since childhood, and was a first-category player. I really loved chess. One time I came into a German dugout that had just been vacated. They left and we got there right

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Lazar Ulitsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID STP051.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4td9n98r

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN behind them. I went in and saw a small chess set. A travel set. It made me very happy. I had that set in my rucksack when I came here. I had canned food, bread, chess, and a pistol. But when we were admitted to the academy, we had to hand over our weapons.

When I arrived in the regiment, in the division, it was called the 150th Stalin Division of Siberian Volunteers. When I left the division in 1944, it was called the 22nd Guards Rifle Division of Siberian Volunteers. At the end of the war, the division liberated Riga and received the title Riga Division.

—You spent three years in the army hospital and in the field hospital. You moved together with the troops. Did field hospitals change when you were leaving the front to go to the academy compared with when you started?

I did not leave from the field hospital when I went to the academy. I left the regimental aid station. I was the commander of the medical and sanitary company, which normally had to set up an aid station. However, there was a huge difference. No comparison even with the medical and sanitary battalion . . .

—In the beginning and later, when you went along . . .

There was a huge difference. A hospital lives according to its own schedule and has its own norms. Medical workers are under no immediate threat. Of course, hospitals were sometimes bombed. Everything happened. Still, there was no immediate danger. However, a medic in the regiment was under constant threat. He could step outside and a bomb could explode, and that would be it.

—Speaking about medical service at the start of the war and in 1944, be it right at the front or further away, what changes took place in terms of the provision of medical services? Shortage of bandages and medicines at first as opposed to later . . .

Here is the thing. At first, the army was retreating and the medical workers retreated with the regiment. It was difficult to provide proper medical aid in accordance with the medical military theory. Everything was constantly changing, so there was no scientific approach. Do you understand? The armies retreated. When they began to advance . . . in late 1943, early 1944 . . . Our forces were constantly advancing in the summer of 1944. Our job was to keep up with them. We had to keep up and could not fall 10-20 kilometers behind. We had to move 1 or 2 kilometers behind the troops. This was very important. Working conditions were very different. We provided help on the move, so to speak. We stopped only for about a half hour, helped the injured who came to us, and sent them to the medical and sanitary battalion if there were carts available. We provided aid on the move. At first, there were times when the regiment advanced and we were 300 meters from the front line. There were aerial shootings, landmines . . . very different circumstances. It was totally different when the troops were moving forward and the medics went behind

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Lazar Ulitsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID STP051.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4td9n98r

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN them.

—What was it like in terms of medications? Did you have enough of everything or not?

I was always amazed later on, when I was studying in the academy and saw the world a little bit, that we had warm clothes, food, and supplies at the front. Except there were those times in the Kalinin Oblast, where we had to move through the swamps. We had to keep very straight and follow the road exactly. There were swamps everywhere. It was terrible. I remember we had such problems with supplies in springtime that we had to keep a sack of crackers at the regimental aid station. Sometimes, during our morning staff meeting, I had to say, “No more than four crackers today.” I did not have to distribute them. Everyone took four crackers out of the bag. There were those times, but there were also the times we received gifts from Novosibirsk, from Siberia. People even sent us meat dumplings. The greatest volume was in the spring, so to prevent them from going bad, the soldiers received 5 kilograms each. They would always overeat and then suffer from diarrhea and other ailments. I cannot compare the provisions we had to any other war, because I have not fought in any other wars, but I think that our division had amazing provision overall. Those who got encircled often had no food. Many things happened.

—Did you have enough bandages?

Yes, we had no shortage of bandages. We had enough of everything.

—Was there a need to wash bandages or did you have enough new ones?

Well, sometimes the nurses had to wash them . . .

—But you had everything you needed . . .

This was a minor issue. In general, we had enough of everything.

—What about blood? Where did the blood for transfusions come from?

We rarely performed drug transfusions in our station, so the supply of blood we had was enough. In hospitals . . . there were probably some issues with blood supply, because the demand for blood was enormous. People still disagree on how many people died in that war: 22, 27, or 30 million. However, the human losses were simply immense. I told you that four regimental commanders died in our one medical company.

—What were the relationships like among medical staff? Did you help and support one another?

Lazar Ulitsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID STP051.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4td9n98r

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

If only I could have such great relationships with people throughout my life! The relationships were great regardless of the rank. Sometimes commanders swore, but then again, everybody swore at the front. This was the norm. However, the relationships were great . . . Imagine! The regimental commander let me, a medical company commander, go to the Leningrad Academy while the war was still going on. It was at the end of April 1944. To do such a thing, one must be not simply a commander, but a great human being. I can say that simply based on this fact alone.

—Did you have to deal with the aid workers who evacuated the injured from the field?

Okay, so the medical and sanitary company had one head doctor, who was the commander, and two junior doctors. In out unit there was a Jewish woman, Liza Kharmas, a former civilian doctor, and a Russian man whose name I forgot. I have it in my diary. They were the junior doctors. Then there was the senior physician’s assistant, two combat medics, a pharmacist, and seven or eight drivers. This was the entire team, and we had about fifty injured people lying on one side of the tent . . .

[Phone call]

—Were there aides that carried the injured from the battlefield? Did they report to you?

You are talking about a platoon of stretcher-bearers. This was its name and it was part of the medical and sanitary company. It had a different number of people at different times. There were approximately twenty- two of them. When we took defensive positions, they stayed with us to help us and get some rest. Even then we had two, three, five injured people at any given time. And about ten sick people. Interestingly, though, colds and other such illnesses were not common. This was due to the war effect on people. After the war, I attended various conferences in St. Petersburg. Here is how they explained it. Many people suffered from hypertension during the siege, but much fewer soldier suffered from it at the front, because they had an outlet for their anger, they could shoot and kill the enemy. Under siege, people had to keep everything inside. This led to . . .

—So the aid workers were under your command during the offensives?

Those stretcher-bearers constantly evacuated the injured form the battlefield on their own two feet or using the dog sled. They would evacuate one and return for the next one, and then the next.

—How were those people, who saved lives, treated?

Extremely well. A war doctor is different from a civilian doctor. A war doctor worked 24 hours a day and had the rank of lieutenant, a senior lieutenant, or a captain. Doctors held those ranks.

Lazar Ulitsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID STP051.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4td9n98r

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

—Were there people of different nationalities and ethnicities among the medical staff?

I think our medical and sanitary company was truly international. I was Jewish, Doctor Liza Kharmas was Jewish, the artillery battalion commander was also Jewish. The medical workers were from Bashkiria, Tatarstan, and Ukraine, of course. This goes without saying. There were Uzbeks and Belorussians. I still remember their faces. This was the time of the Soviet Union.

—Were there ethnic tensions?

No, it didn't even occur to anyone. It was incredible! We took defensive positions and then went for the restructuring. One time we were sent to a place near Moscow for one month. There we had our forces replenished, because so few soldiers survived. We were replenished, there was some rest and performances, and everything was good.

—Did you have wounded German soldiers brought in for treatment?

Wounded Germans . . . I understand your question. When we came to the academy, there were German prisoners of war there. They built the academy and helped with repairs. Our academy had a German Department. During the breaks, we would go outside and speak with the Germans prisoners to practice our German. We spoke to them there, but at the front . . . I would like to tell you my uncle’s story, if I may. He is from Kiev [Kyiv] Oblast as well and he was a dentist before the war. This is an interesting and an entirely truthful story. He was a dentist but was drafted as a soldier, not a doctor. He sustained a knee injury during his first battle and lost consciousness. When he came to, he saw a German doctor, who looked at him and said, “I can see that you are Jewish, but you must pretend you are Georgian if you want to stay alive.” He then sent him to a hospital. This happened somewhere near Kharkov [Kharkiv]. He pretended he was Georgian and stayed in the hospital for treatment. No problem. There was a Ukrainian man in the same hospital room. He was from a town of Rakitno—a district center between Kiev and Belaya Tserkov [Bila Tserkva]—with a population of 5,000. It turned out that my uncle had treated his teeth before the war. He had his private dental practice. He asked, “Do you recognize me?” “No.” “I recognized you. I came to your home to get my teeth fixed.” Can you imagine what my uncle felt? He got very nervous . . . The Ukrainian man said, “Don't worry. I am a criminal and the criminals do not snitch.” He was a convict who had been sentenced to 10 years of prison for banditry. Then the hospital administration said that all Ukrainians who felt better were free to go home, but not the Russians. They tried to differentiate between Russians and Ukrainians in such a way. Russians were not allowed to leave, but Ukrainians could. That man said, “Come with me when I am leaving.” He helped him get out. Can you believe that? Then they rented a room in a village and lived there for some time. When our troops began to advance and the sound of gunfire was drawing near, that criminal said, “You know, here is the thing. The Soviet power will do you no harm, so you can go home. But I will get ten years in prison again, so it will be better for me to go with the

Lazar Ulitsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID STP051.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4td9n98r

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

Germans.”

—Your daughter is very successful: she is a professor and a doctor of medicine.

Our Masha, Maria Lazarevna, is a professor at the Neuropathology Department of the St. Petersburg Pediatrics Academy.

—I understand that she knows now about your youth. Did you also talk to her about your time at the front when she young?

Well, she knows because we often had veterans gather at our house.

—I do not mean that. You were sitting in your kitchen in the evening, having tea and sandwiches . . .

As a rule, I did not tell her a lot, as I am telling you know, but I spoke to her from time to time when I thought of something. I still write letters to the veterans from my regiment. I recently received the latest letter from Michurina, an eighty-four-year-old former medical worker from the regiment that was next to ours. She lives in Novosibirsk.

—Thank you very much for meeting and speaking with us.

Lazar Ulitsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID STP051.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4td9n98r

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

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