DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Vladimir Nemets. Full, unedited interview, 2009 ID BEL043.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b49096 ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN TABLE OF CONTENTS ITEM TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION 2 CITATION & RIGHTS 15 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 1/15 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Vladimir Nemets. Full, unedited interview, 2009 ID BEL043.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b49096 ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION —Today is November 19, 2009. We are in Brest, Belarus, meeting with a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. Please introduce yourself, tell us when and where you were born, and a little bit about your prewar life. What was your family like, who were your friends, what kind of school did you attend? How did you spend the war years and how did you come to serve in the Red Army? Please, go ahead. My name is Vladimir Ilyich Nemets. I was born on August 11, 1924, in Minsk to a family of higher-education instructors. My mother was a research associate at the Academy of Sciences and my father had a master's degree and taught at the Institute of Journalism in Minsk. My family life was very interesting and I would say educational. It is strange, but I don't remember studying in school or doing homework. I do remember very well sitting by our home library. My parents had two rooms like I have now, but you could not see the walls because they were covered with bookshelves. I would get on the stepladder and read a lot. I particularly liked historical literature about ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and Europe. My favorite was the history of the Napoleonic Wars by a historian named [Evgeny] Tarle. I loved soccer and remember being proud that I played for the Minsk youth team. I also liked formal dance and studied in a dance studio at the Young Pioneers Palace, where I gladly demonstrated all the dances I had learned. I was not yet done with school when the war broke out. When the war started . for some reason my parents moved me to a construction-oriented technical school after seventh grade. I don't know why they thought I would be better off there. Right after finishing my first year there I was taking the tram home and found out that the war had started. The next day I saw trucks filled with people in their underwear roll up to our house. These were refugees from Brest. The people had fled Brest without even having time to dress and we received them. And then the bombings started. My father and I fled Minsk on foot. It was very tragic because someone told us that my mother and younger brother had already left. The Academy of Sciences in Minsk is on the edge of town near the Chelyuskinites Park, so it would not have been strange if they had already left. Later my mother came to her senses and realized that she had fled alone. At the time, there was basically no telephone service. We did not have a phone despite being an educated family. Personal phones were very rare back then. She returned to Minsk, but we had already left home. She did not flee in time and was imprisoned in the Minsk ghetto along with my younger brother. Like all but a few Jews who were imprisoned in the ghetto, they perished. Only a handful of people got out. My father and I left Minsk on foot and traveled I don't know how many kilometers. We hitched a ride at one point and got to Mogilev. In Mogilev evacuation trains were being formed and my father and I ended up in Kzyl-Orda [Kyzylorda], Kazakhstan. My father first taught at an institute there 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 2/15 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Vladimir Nemets. Full, unedited interview, 2009 ID BEL043.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b49096 ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN and then joined the army as a volunteer. He decided that I should study at a technical construction school, where I stayed until August 1941. Then I was drafted and sent to train in the 2nd Turkestan Machine Gunner School in the city of Mary, which I graduated in March 1942. —1942 or 1943? 1942. Actually, pardon me, my memory fails me. I was drafted in September 1942, and I finished the 2nd Turkestan Machine Gunner School in March 1943 as a lieutenant and was sent to a reserve officers’ regiment in Osh, Kyrgyzstan. From there I was sent on a military train along with other officers to the 2nd Ukrainian Front where I was assigned to my first military unit as a platoon commander in the 315th Regiment of the 19th Rifle Division. I remember that really well. Later I became the commander of a machine-gun platoon which was first moved from the 2nd to the 3rd Ukrainian Front and then from the 3rd to the 4th. That is how we got so far south. In Moldavia [Moldova] we crossed the Dniester River, passed through Bulgaria, and reached Yugoslavia. In Yugoslavia we fought intense battles. I took part in the liberation of Belgrade. Then we were sent to Hungary and crossed the Danube River. I finished the war in Graz. I forgot to mention that I was wounded twice. The first time was near the village of Verblyuzhka in Ukraine. I remember that village well; we even wondered why it had such an interesting name [in Ukrainian and Russian the name roughly means "little female camel" —Trans.]. Turns out it was named this way because it was built on several hills which looked like a camel's humps. I was wounded a second time during the crossing of the Danube after I had already reached the far bank. After that I fought in Hungary and finished the war in Graz, Austria. That was what I did during the war. In 1946 I was demobilized and returned to my native Minsk. My studies in Minsk did not go too well. I had studied dance before the war and had a knack for dancing. My euphoria helped me build upon that after the war in 1946–1947 I was an ensemble performer, a dancer in the Belorussian [Belarusian] Military District, for a year. In other words, my life took a crazy turn. Then I realized that it wasn't for me. I was accepted into the Grodno [Hrodna] Pedagogical Institute and graduated it in 1951 and, along with my wife whom I met in Grodno during my studies and who is still with me, moved to Brest. In Brest I was the assistant principal at a school and taught Russian language and literature. Before and after I was assistant principal, I taught Russian language and literature. I switched back and forth between these two roles, both before becoming head teacher and after. Working as a Russian language and literature teacher was, I think, a very significant part of my life. In some sense I followed in my parents' footsteps although they both taught at institutions of higher learning. I worked with children, whom I have always loved and taught them not only literature, but also literary reading of Russian and Belorussian poetry, which I enjoyed myself. To this day my students often visit me. 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 3/15 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Vladimir Nemets. Full, unedited interview, 2009 ID BEL043.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b49096 ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN I'm very proud of one of my students who is now in America, finishing up at university. I think she graduated with a bachelor's degree. Another one of my former pupils is a student at the Minsk Conservatory. Many of the students come to visit me to read poems out loud. They love it and some have gotten quite good. I had taught them since first grade when they first entered our musical gymnasium. My last year teaching I worked at the Brest Musical Gymnasium and many of them came to visit me when they were already university students. They come to my home and ask to read poetry together. That is how I've lived for the past few years, it's been quite interesting. —You said that your father volunteered for the army? Yes, he volunteered. When arrived in Grodno, they needed high-class teaches at the Grodno Pedagogical Institute. —Was this before the war or afterwards? This was right after the start of the war when we evacuated. Even though he was given a draft exemption because he worked in higher education, he volunteered anyways. —What happened to him? I said good-bye to him near Kzyl-Orda where a mechanized regiment was being formed. He was the regiment's deputy political commander and was sent to fight near Moscow. During the defense of Moscow, which did not only include the outskirts of Moscow . There was a town called Solnechnogorsk, where he was killed while defending Moscow. —Did you receive a death notice? Yes, I received a death notice before I joined the army. In 1942 I was still studying in Kzyl-Orda, and I received it there. As I understand it, they were taken from the trains and sent right into battle where almost all of them died defending Moscow. The fighting around Moscow was heavy. Almost all those who were stationed 10–20 kilometers from the city during the defense of Moscow perished.