DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Efim Stolyarsky. Full, unedited interview, 2009 ID LA027.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4q52ff7k ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN TABLE OF CONTENTS ITEM TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION 2 CITATION & RIGHTS 14 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 1/14 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Efim Stolyarsky. Full, unedited interview, 2009 ID LA027.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4q52ff7k ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION -Today is March 9, 2009. We are in Los Angeles meeting a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. Please introduce yourself and tell us about your life before the war. What was your family like? How did you come to serve in the Red Army and what did you do during the war? You are at the office of the Association of World War II Veterans. Our association has been in existence for 32 years. - Please introduce yourself. My name is Efim Moiseyevich Stolyarsky and I was born on March 18th, 1923. My grandson was a birthday gift for me, we share a birthday. I was born in the village of Popilnya, near the station of Brovky [now Brovky Pershi], Kyiv Oblast [now Zhytomyr Oblast]. My family was working-class. My father was a freight loader at the railroad station and my mother was a housekeeper. My grandfather was a stove maker. Later my father worked as the scribe at the train station, he had very good handwriting. My father was religious, but concealed this. My sister and I knew he had a tallit and a few other things. My grandfather went out to pray. Later my father worked at a sugar factory. In general he worked in the Ukrainian sugar industry. He worked in the village of Turbiv at the sugar factory and then at another sugar factory in Skomoroshky. I remember these villages. Life was not easy, we always kept livestock, pigs, chickens, kept a vegetable garden, planted potatoes. I remember all of this very well. Agriculture was for subsistence. Then my father was transferred to Vinnytsya to work at “Sakhsbyt” [a processing and distribution center]. This was in approximately 1939. He first worked in a sugar industry trust and then in the “Sakhsbyt” state-run enterprise. There were 13-15 kolkhozes and 200 sovkhozes that grew sugar beets in the Vinnytsya Oblast. My father worked at Sakhsbyt for the remained of his life. He was respected among both his subordinates and in Moscow at the Ministry of Sugar Production. Pidhornyi [1st Secretary of CP-Ukraine 1957-1936; member of Politburo] himself worked at the Vinnytsya Sugar Trust as the chief engineer. In Vinnytsya I completed high school. At first I studied at High School No.2 on Lenin Street. It was an 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 2/14 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Efim Stolyarsky. Full, unedited interview, 2009 ID LA027.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4q52ff7k ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN exemplary school. Then for some reason we were integrated into High School No.15 on Gorky Street. That is where I completed tenth grade. Vinnytsya is a lovely town, and I have many fond memories of it. The Palace of the Pioneers was beautiful. First it was housed on Kozitsky Street on at the intersection with Lenin Street. Later it was transferred far outside the city where was a lot of land, a wonderful building, and the Palace of Pioneers. I was a member of the Palace of Pioneers Council. That is also where I graduated from driving school, having received an amateur driver’s license. In 1941 I was finishing up high school and applying to the Odesa Shipbuilding Institute. But alas… from there we were drafted into the Odesa Artillery School, where I completed accelerated training. By 1942 I was a lieutenant at the front. Our school trained extra-heavy artillery crews. All the cadets were educated because a lot of calculations have to be made when firing heavy artillery over large distances. I was in Odesa during the first air raid. The oil storage tanks was on fire, the steamer Lenin sand in front of my very eyes. Pushkin’s House was damaged during the first air raid too. We helped extinguish the fire. The Black Sea Fleet’s oil supply had been bombed. Then High Command decided that the Odesa Artillery School as well as the infantry school must be evacuated deep into the USSR. We were lined up, our equipment was loaded onto the steamer “Gruziya” [Georgia] while we marched to Mykolaiv. When we were a little ways out of Odesa we encountered refugees. All the people were on foot. They had one cart which was loaded with all their suitcases. A little horse was pulling the cart, and all the people were walking… I was ordered back to Odesa by my battery commander. He gave me an empty tanker truck and told me to fill it with gasoline and catch up to the column. I just made it before German paratroopers landed and cut off the infantry school that was retreating right behind us. The infantry school was already in battle while we were boarding trains in Mykolaiv. Our equipment was unloaded elsewhere and brought to our destination to the Sukhoy Log District in the Urals. This district was a place where people were sent to live in exile. The locals called them “Chaldon.” They spoke a strange dialect… The only commercial venture in town was the firesand factory. We trained for a little while longer, then we were lined up, all promoted to lieutenants, and sent to the reserves in Zlatoust where our unit was being assembled. There were 13 of us lieutenants. When the very first commander came to recruit troops for the front all 13 of us, all Odesites, volunteered. We were recruited by Colonel Uzlyager, he was Jewish. I remember. He was an old officer, a colonel with bars on his insignia. We were assigned to the 1164th Artillery Regiment, outfitted with 152-mm howitzers. I was a comely young man and the colonel very much wanted to make me his orderly. At the front a colonel is prescribed and orderly. However, I refused and was made given command of a battery. Our battery had four weapons, two platoons with two guns each. I commanded a platoon and was the commanding officer of the battery. We boarded trains for the front in Zlatoust. Nobody knew where we were going, they kept us 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 3/14 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Efim Stolyarsky. Full, unedited interview, 2009 ID LA027.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4q52ff7k ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN in the dark about that. We had one GAZ-AA truck and one ChTZ tractor to load all our equipment. I alone loaded the weapons onto the train with a tractor because I had obtained an amateur tractor and driver’s licenses in Vinnytsya at the Palace of Pioneers. I was trusted because it takes experience to load a heavy gun onto a platform. It weighed seven tons. When we were done loading we traveled north. We disembarked in Bologoye, near Leningrad. When we were approaching we saw flares at night. How could this be? We had no tractors or trucks… Where were we going? - What year was this? This was 1942. I was struck by how well-organized everything was; the train entered the station, and the on-duty officer reported to the station commandant. Our Colonel Uzlyager emerged, and he was a tall man. We were immediately issued 24 tractors and 36 trucks. They came right away! We were then taken to the staging area. This was quite close to the front. We could hear gunfire. War. We were camouflaging our positions… We had never been under fire, we were inexperienced. General Degtyaryov, the artillery commander, stopped by and told us to try to kill at least one German with every shot. We were young, and said we could do better! I was assigned to the first artillery team. Our colonel received an order and according to artillery rules and regulations the first team has to scout out fighting positions and observation points. This is called reconnaissance. I was assigned to this group. We traveled a short distance… For some reason we were hungry. We saw a rutabaga field and rushed for it, but it wasn’t that easy. A voice came from a nearby shack “Halt! I’ll shoot!” There was an old man guarding it. The government was already keeping track of everything. We treated him to some tobacco and he let us each take a rutabaga. When we departed Zlatoust, a local factory gifted us all dirks. We used them to peel the rutabagas. What can I say… that rutabaga was like a jet engine. Nobody could even stand for five minutes afterward. Everyone stuffed themselves… We completed our recon mission and took up our firing position. We were very careful when we did this because we had never been under fire before. The most experienced among us was the regiment commander. I was a lieutenant and my battery was commanded by Junior Lieutenant Polonets. He was a stocky man, a Don Cossack, always wore a sabre belt. I was 19 going on 20. We took up our position and dug in. We did this very timidly and without experience. I was brought the fire plan. We were to take part in the artillery barrage at the start of the first attempt to break the siege of Leningrad [now St.