DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Abram Sapozhnikov. Full, unedited interview, 2012 ID NY092.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4639k70g ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN TABLE OF CONTENTS ITEM TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION 2 CITATION & RIGHTS 9 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 1/9 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Abram Sapozhnikov. Full, unedited interview, 2012 ID NY092.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4639k70g ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION —Today is February 2, 2012. We are at the Jewish Center in Brooklyn, meeting with a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. Kindly introduce yourself, and tell us when and where you were born. My name is Abram Iosifovich Sapozhnikov. I was born on December 15, 1920, in the city of Berdichev [Berdychiv], Ukrainian SSR. —What your pre-war life was like, what can you remember? I remember quite a lot. I had a brother and a sister. In the 1930s we left and traveled like gypsies. We got to Tver and from there to Moscow Oblast, near Moscow. Mom and dad worked in Moscow. I had to cook porridge for myself and for my brother and sister. Then my brother . In 1936, I wanted to enroll in a factory apprenticeship school [FZU], but they did not accept me because I was called Abram. I wanted to become an electrician. —You were refused in 1936 because you were Jewish? Because my name is Abram. They did not say it was because I am Jewish, but yes, this was the reason. I don’t remember how, but I got all the way to the Kremlin and appealed to Krupskaya to allow me to study. She helped me secure a place at the factory school near Belorussky Railway Terminal. I graduated and was sent to a rail car repair factory, where I electrified rail cars. My parents lived in Kazan. Dad’s brother invited them there. I worked for a while—I don’t remember for how long—and then quit and joined my parents. When I arrived, I got a job as an electrician at the Bolshoi Drama Theater of Kazan. It was 1938. On October 25, 1940, I was conscripted into the Red Army. I was stationed in Gatchina near Leningrad [St. Petersburg] with the 455th Independent Communications Battalion. We were taught how to repair tank transmitters. Then I was transferred to a rifle division in Vyborg, which was deployed on the Finnish border. This was on June 18, 1941. June 21 was a Saturday. Everyone wanted to relax on Sunday. Our group consisted of five people, we took leave to see the city and the fortress of Vyborg. Everything was fine, we went to bed in the evening. And at four in the morning we were raised by combat alert. We heard artillery salvos along the border. That day, our commanders who lived in and around Leningrad went on leave. We did not know what to do; just ran around. There was an order . We had Polish rifles with no cartridges. Warehouses were stocked to the brim with domestically manufactured cartridges, but no rifles. There were gas masks and sapper spades. On June 22 border guards came running from the border and told us that we had been attacked and that war had begun. Villages were ablaze along the border, and everything was clouded in smoke. The day was 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 2/9 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Abram Sapozhnikov. Full, unedited interview, 2012 ID NY092.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4639k70g ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN very clear. Already at five o’clock, Messerschmitt planes with black swastikas were circling over our yard strafing, killing, and wounding. We did not know that the war had begun until the border guards arrived and told us. When we realized that, we began to dig in. We were scared with tales of enemy parachutists and tankettes being dropped off airplanes. We knew nothing and understood even less. We were retreating, and I don’t remember how I found myself in Gatchina again. Planes overtook us and chased every single person, military or civilian; they flew low and strafed anyone in sight. In Gatchina we were formed in groups of ten or fifteen people and told to move along the Vyborg-Leningrad highway, defending ourselves however we could, towards Leningrad, where we would be reassembled. We rested at night, and by day walked in the woods along the highway, eating the remaining rusks and drinking swamp water. Whenever tanks overtook us, we hid in roadside ditches. Each of us had five rounds of ammo in our rifles, so we took cover because we could not fight back. When convoys would pass us by, we would resume our trek in the forest. Eventually we reached Pulkovo Heights, where we came across the people’s militia. We were given an assignment and shown where to dig trenches. On September 8, the Germans were finally stopped; Leningrad had been encircled. Stalin did not foresee this; he did not think Leningrad would hold on. He was unhappy with Voroshilov who commanded the Leningrad Front, and sent Zhukov instead. On September 14, Zhukov took command and arrived at Pulkovo Heights at the 42nd Army headquarters. During the blockade, I was sent to junior signals officer courses, located near the Vitebsk Train Station. I finished the course in the rank of junior lieutenant and was posted to Nevskaya Dubrovka. There were five of us going there. As we were passing by our “Katyusha” rocket launchers, bombs thundered down. We were covered with dirt. I was dug up, but couldn’t hear anything, only saw how bombs dropped. I am still deaf in my left ear. When I came to my senses, I got to a destroyed paper mill in Nevskaya Dubrovka. There, the chief of staff of the 86th Division met me and said, “You are taking command of a platoon.” He gave me a list—the entire platoon consisted of Uzbeks, and Tajiks . There were only three Russians in it who knew the language; the rest did not understand the Russian language. I had to accept and proceed. I immediately received orders for the platoon to set up and maintain communication lines between the 330th Regiment, positioned on Nevsky Pyatachok, and the command of the 86th Division on the right bank. When we got into the trenches, I assigned tasks to my men, but not knowing the names, I called them 1st, 2nd, 3rd and so on. I stationed them along the trench and gave commands for the crossing to the Nevsky Pyatachok bridgehead on the left bank. The terrible wonders we saw that night, the goings-on, only God knows. I remember the Neva was alight with parachute flares. The Germans fired machine guns from the right and left flanks, and shelled us repeatedly. A battalion after battalion arrived at the crossing: first went the infantry and sappers; signalmen were told to wait for orders. None came that night. We witnessed frightful things. Before our eyes a shell would hit a boat, it would rise up in the air and all those voices would cry out, “Help!” But what could we do, we were up next. An order arrived at night to move from the first to the third crossing. It was up the trench. The trenches were stuffed with people of all ranks—sappers, signalmen, infantry, artillerymen—and all kinds of military 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 3/9 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Abram Sapozhnikov. Full, unedited interview, 2012 ID NY092.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4639k70g ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN equipment. Having arrived at the third crossing, we received a signal with a flashlight. An operation group got into a boat. When they sailed off, the flashlight flickered several times, but no more signals came afterwards. We waited and waited, sent messengers to report to the division headquarters, and the order came to return to the first crossing. And so, nobody ever found out what had happened to that operation group. We stayed until the morning at the first crossing. It was a clear, sunny morning. The commandant of the crossing ordered the signalmen into a boat. The operators carrying a telephone set boarded, while the radio operator stayed behind with the radio. Having connected its wires to the telephone, I grabbed the coil, put people in the boat and sat in the rear bench seat. Fear grants one strength and courage. I hadn’t even noticed how we got to the middle of the river. The wire stuck, but with a good yank and a push from the oars, the wire began to unwind again. What seemed like moments later, we crashed into the shore. Fortunately for us, when we were crossing the river, not a single shot was fired. But as soon as we went up the trench, an artillery salvo hit our shore. I took one soldier with me and we ran down the trench. We found broken wires, I peeled them with my teeth, linked them together, secured and made a call. Both banks responded, the line of communication had been established. We were shown our positions in the trench. There were three trenches on Nevsky Pyatachok, which was five kilometers wide and about a kilometer in depth: two ours and one German. The trenches had been dug in the sand. It was a sandy bridgehead, and with each explosion the sand crumbled, the trenches became more and more shallow. And the trenches sheltered our soldiers from snipers, from the shelling.