DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Mikhail Boguslavsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008 ID IS008.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4tk1p 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 Mikhail Boguslavsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008 ID IS008.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4tk1p ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION —Today is March 4, 2008. We are in Tel Aviv interviewing a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. Please introduce yourself and tell us where and when you were born. Please, go ahead. I was born on September 6, 1921 in the town of Kanev [Kaniv] in Ukraine, Kiev [Kyiv] Oblast [now Cherkasy Oblast]. Kaniv is the place where Shevchenko is buried. When I was one years old, in 1921 there was a famine, and my parents and I moved to Dnepropetrovsk [Dnipro]. I lived in Dnepropetrovsk until 1941. As they say, we lived, loved, and went to school. I graduated from tenth grade in 1939. —What did your parents do? My father was a bookbinder, he worked at a factory. My mother was a housekeeper. I also had a sister, who now lives in Ashkelon; that’s our whole family. —Please tell me, did you also know your grandparents? Yes, I knew my grandmother, she also lived in Kaniv until about 1940. I did not know my grandfather. —Was your family traditional in a religious sense? My grandmother was religious. However, I would not say that my parents were religious. In any case, they did not go to the synagogue. In Dnepropetrovsk they spoke Russian at home. They knew Yiddish. I was born at a time when Jewish schools were being shut down. In Ukraine, and particularly in Deipropetrovsk, the schools were being switched to Ukrainian. And I graduated from a Ukrainian school. Afterwards, we lived in a Jewish district of Dnepropetrovsk. Our building was completely Jewish. However, I did not attend a Jewish school. —So until 1939, yes? Until 1939. In 1939 I graduated from tenth grade. In 1939 there was a draft in accordance with a new draft law, so all recent graduates were called up. Even those who enrolled in universities were drafted. To my great disappointment, I was not drafted in 1939 even though I was supposed to be. They determined that my eyesight was poor. All of my friends whom I had studied with and with whom I graduated were drafted, but I was not. I was quite upset and enrolled in the History Department of the Dnepropetrovsk State University. Once I had finished my second—no my first—year of studies, the war broke out. 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 2/14 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Mikhail Boguslavsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008 ID IS008.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4tk1p ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN This is how it happened. The first year had ended and it was time for final exams. On June 25 we were supposed to take an exam in ancient history, but on Sunday, June 22, we heard over the radio that war had begun. Nobody knew where to go. I went to the university. I was not the only one, our whole class showed up without a summons. We had an rally where we were told that war had broken out. We all had a new task ahead of us. Nobody attended the exam because it was cancelled. My wartime life began. You see, students were an already organized group which could be easily reorganized as needed. Young students aged 19-20 were immediately sent to factories and workshops. There, we talked about the difficulty of the situation and the mobilization. Then we students were sent to a collective farm to help with the harvest. We spent several days there. We were then taken back to the city. We walked around town, digging trenches and bomb shelters. The bombing of Dnepropetrovsk began. On June 9, no, pardon me, on August 9, I was drafted into the army. I was now deemed fit for service and got called up. We arrived at the barracks in Dnepropetrovsk. We were not issued uniforms. We kept the clothes we arrived in. We were given a place to sleep in some garage. We spent the night there. At night, there was an air raid, and we were led to a bomb shelter. We sat there for a bit. This went on for several days. During the day we had so-called basic training which consisted of reading the military regulations, marching, sprinting, and drill. This went on for some time and we did not have uniforms or weapons and we had not taken an oath of loyalty. On August 18 we were assembled. Our group consisted entirely of former students of Dnepropetrovsk higher learning institutions. We were led across town. We were not told where we were going. We were led all the way to the outskirts of town, to the village of Krasnopolye [Krasnopil]. This is a suburb of Dnepropetrovsk. We were then ordered to dig an antitank trench. So, on August 18 we began digging this ditch. We were out in the open and it was very hot; they brought us a limited quantity of food, but no water. We dug this antitank ditch and other trenches. We were only briefly told about the situation at the front. On August 22, well on the 22-23rd, retreating units approached Dnepropetrovsk from the direction of Dneprodzerzhynsk [Kamyanske]. We students were already soldiers, but we did not have uniforms or weapons. We were inducted into the military units which had occupied the trenches we had just dug. —So your training lasted less than a month? We had no real military training. We simply lived next to the barracks until we were sent to dig those trenches. We had no weapons or equipment aside from our shovels and pickaxes. That was it. So, we were inducted into those units . Together with those retreating units we took up defensive positions. There 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 3/14 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Mikhail Boguslavsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008 ID IS008.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4tk1p ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN would be an armed soldier who had retreated and one of us. Sometimes near dawn on the 24th German units approached and began advancing on our trenches. There was a short battle. The Germans did not advance right away, it was probably only their recon. By nightfall the regular German units had arrived. There was heavy bombing. We were resting in a small grove. Our commanders decided to withdraw all the students from the fight. They ordered us all to withdraw and led us back across town to the railroad bridge across the Dnieper River. The bridge was mined, so we were not allowed across. They then marched us to another railroad bridge in Shevchenko Park. There was only one rail line there. It was across this bridge that our group, which could not have been more than 100 people, crossed the Dnieper. We began our retreat from Dnepropetrovsk. On July 25 our troops abandoned the left bank, sorry, the right bank of Dnipropetrovsk. We walked along the railroad tracks until nightfall to get away from town. We heard explosions behind us in Dnepropetrovsk, the fighting had moved to the left bank. Just then a passing train of flatbed cars loaded with factory equipment happened to stop. We were ordered to board the platforms. We climbed onto the open platforms and rode the train. We were taken westward, no I’m sorry, eastward. We made our way, by train and by foot, to Rostov. We had left the war behind us. We had broken away. In Rostov we were put onto another train and taken to Krasnodar. In Krasnodar, in the Krasnodar Krai, we were stationed in the stanitsa of Slavianskaya. There is a giant apple orchard there. We set up camp right in the orchard. We stayed there for a long time. Only now do I realize why we, young people, were not thrown into battle. Our group of students was being saved for a military school. Soon, exactly that happened. By autumn the Germans had taken Rostov and had begun advancing into the Caucasus. We were again loaded onto a train, but this time into real covered cars, and moved. We did not know where we were going because nobody would tell us. We had one sergeant who traveled with us and commanded us. We traveled for forty-five days from Krasnodar. We were brought to the city of Astrakhan. This forty-day journey was excruciating. We had no food because we were issued three days’ worth of food, but the journey to the next food distribution point was eight days. We led a very hungry existence. If you managed to scrounge something up, then you could keep it. We traveled without cleaning or washing for forty-five days. Can you imagine the state of our hygiene? —Did you ever fall ill? Well, we were young and strong, sickness could not get us. We had a furnace in our car, so we would keep 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 4/14 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Mikhail Boguslavsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008 ID IS008.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4tk1p ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN it going in order to stay warm. We were brought to a military school in the city of Astrakhan.