DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Moisey Malkis. Full, unedited interview, 2008 ID IS056.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4dm32 ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN TABLE OF CONTENTS ITEM TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION 2 CITATION & RIGHTS 12 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 1/12 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Moisey Malkis. Full, unedited interview, 2008 ID IS056.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4dm32 ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION - Today is March 2nd, 2008. We are in the city of Hadera, meeting with a WWII veteran. Please introduce yourself. Where were you born? What was your family like? Tell us about your childhood. My name is Moisei Solomonovich Malkis. I was born in Odessa in 1924, July 31st. My father's name is Solomon Iosifovich. My mother's name is Rachel, she was born in Detroit, state Michigan. - How did she happen to be in Odessa? Well, it was very... I can tell you how it happened. At the end of the 1800's there was a depression in the US. My grandfather and his brothers had money so they went to Russia to invest. My grandfather built a factory in Odessa. His brother built Nikolaev South Shipyard in Nikolaev. His other brother built a metallurgy plant in Dnepropetrovsk. When they brought my mom there she was twelve. They arrived on a steamship to Odessa... When the Civil War began everything was taken away from them. Their plants and factories were confiscated and my parents were kicked out on the street. My mom told me that in 1920 an American steamship arrived to Odessa. She got on that steamship and told them that she was an American national. A man there told her to embark immediately. But she said she wasn't by herself, she had a husband and a child... So he stopped talking to her altogether. That is my origin. - Tell us about your childhood and your school. I went to school in Odessa in 1932. It was a middle school No.58. Its address was 12 Tiraspol Street. I studied there until 1941. The war began and my family was evacuated on one of the last motor ships first to Sevastopol, then to Novorossiysk. From there we were sent to the village of Labinsk in Krasnodar Krai. In some time my parents realized that the front was approaching and we left for Almaty Region, Kazakh District, Turgen village. I was seventeen then. There I went to the school of agriculture mechanization, upon graduation of which I became combine operator. I worked at the local kolkhoz "Politotdelets". I earned a bag of wheat and was drafted into the army. The wheat I left for my parents. I got drafted to the front. I was sent to the Leningrad Front. It was August of 1942. First I was sent to the town of Ladoga where the naval academy was located. When I arrived there with my detachment the academy was already disbanded. I was sent to Kronstadt. Here I have a badge "Defender of the Kronstadt Fortress". I didn't serve there for too long. I was a marine there and served as a guard. 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 2/12 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Moisey Malkis. Full, unedited interview, 2008 ID IS056.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4dm32 ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN Next, before the preparation of a break-through of the Siege of Leningrad, my crew and I were sent to Nevskaya Dubrovka. We called it Nevskiy Patch. It was mainly the most bloody place in the history of the Leningrad Siege. It was a piece of land five hundred meters deep and a kilometer long. It was the piece of land which we won back from the Germans on the left bank of the Neva River. That is where my actual war participation began. Then I was assigned to the platoon of regiment reconnaissance. We went out on a reconnaissance to the front border by the Neva lighthouse. I remember this because we were almost taken hostage. They started shooting at us but we left just on time. Then, before the break-through of the Siege of Leningrad, we had an intensive training in martial arts. Moreover, we were making narrow ladders, boat hooks and anchors that were attached to ropes and had sharpened hooks so that at the break-through of the Siege of Leningrad we could conquer Shlisselburg. At night we heard the clanking of metal buckets: it was the Germans pouring water over the steep river banks so that it could freeze over night to make it harder for us to climb breaking through the Siege. Telling you about the breach of the Siege of Leningrad... is the greatest honor for me. The breach of the Siege began on January 12, 1943. I remember that morning was foggy. Then artillery training started and it lasted for about two hours. I hadn't seen anything like that before. After Germans bombarded the opposite shore of Shlisselburg and its front border, our signal rockets signaled green and we proceeded on the Neva's ice towards Shlisselburg. My comrades, one in the front and one in the back, were carrying those narrow ladders. I ran carrying Degtyaryov's hand-held machine gun. It was very heavy - 32 kilos. I was running on the Neva River towards Shlisselburg. Right after our artillery training our troops started bombarding with Katyushas. When we began the offensive Germans started heavily bombarding us because the entire shore of Shlisselburg was covered with trenches with barbed wire in front. They opened fire and I saw so many soldiers fall on the Neva River: some were killed, some were injured. Together with my attack crew we got there and started using those narrow ladders to climb up. Besides that we hurled those hooked anchors. It is a kind of anchor that they usually have on the ships. So we hurled those hooks up and used the ropes attached to the hooks to climb up. We managed to reach the front border. We cut the barbed wire and began the attack. Germans started shooting and were jumping out of their trenches. We even had to engage in an unarmed combat, that is, hand-to-hand fight. Germans couldn't handle it and started retreat. My platoon - the regiment reconnaissance platoon - together with the others received an order to force conquer the Preobrazhensky Hill in Slisselburg. This was the key to taking over the city. We took the hill by storm and participated in further attack. Germans left Shlisselburg. They stopped six kilometers away from our front defense border. I'll remember that attack for the rest of my life because of how bloody it was. We lost a lot of people but we 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 3/12 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Moisey Malkis. Full, unedited interview, 2008 ID IS056.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4dm32 ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN still took over Shlisselburg. After that we the soldiers of the Volkhov Front. During the attack of 13-17 of January combat action took place and we united with the troops which were approaching from the opposite side from the Volkhov direction. We took over some workers' villages. By the fifth, workers' village, the Leningrad Front, and the Volkhov Front met. We were happy, gave each other hugs and threw our hats in the air. We breached the Leningrad Siege! We finally were able to lift that Siege! We arranged communications through Ladoga and then through the railroad which was near the front - that is how Leningrad was connected to the mainland. Food supply and weapons started arriving to Leningrad. For a few days we stopped at the second echelon in Slisselburg. There we discovered a German food warehouse and we were happy to have found it because we were starving. Our food situation was very difficult. We entered that warehouse and we saw those plastic orange boxes with butter in them. Besides that we found bread wrapped in cellophane paper with the production date 1932 on it. That is, Germans already then started preparing for that war, started preparing food supplies in addition to the weapons. After lifting the Siege of Leningrad, we moved further towards Sinyavino peat bogs by the Sinyavino field in the direction of Sinyavino. There we executed the so called attack-night search. Here is what it means. We initiated the attack and Germans opened fire at us. Meanwhile our commanders were in the trenches and were making note from where Germans were shooting, recording their fire coordinates to use this information against them later on. We cut the wire fence again and advanced to the neutral line. That is when Germans opened a hurricane of fire at us. They used six barrel mortars, the nebelwerfers. Every bomb whistled with its own particular howl. The scenery was terrifying. In that combat I got injured. My head was injured, right here, in my jaw. One Kazakh saved me. His last name was Garifulin. He got me out of there. My entire body was covered with blood. He pulled me out of the battle field. He was Tatar. He brought me to the hollow where the battalion first aid post was located. My comrades already started putting bandages on me already at the injury location. At the post the nurses put more bandages on me. I was all covered with bandages and could drink water from a sipping cup. After that I was sent to medical sanitary battalion.