DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Savely Bass. Full, unedited interview, 2009 ID UKR008.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b49v6p ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN TABLE OF CONTENTS ITEM TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION 2 CITATION & RIGHTS 13 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 1/13 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Savely Bass. Full, unedited interview, 2009 ID UKR008.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b49v6p ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION —Today is June 15, 2009. We are in Dnepropetrovsk [Dnipro], meeting with a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. Please introduce yourself. My name is Savely—or Zayvel in Yiddish—Borisovich Bass. —When and where were you born? Please tell us about your family and your prewar years. I was born on August 31, 1922, in the city of Kremenchug in Poltava Oblast. My father was still a young man; he was a furrier, a fur tailor. My mother was first a housewife, and then a seamstress. In 1925 my family moved to Dnepropetrovsk, where my father worked in his line of work. In 1930 I started going to the Dnepropetrovsk School No. 71, a Ukrainian school: they taught in Ukrainian. In 1940 I graduated. By the way, in school I was the secretary of Komsomol organization and was responsible for military-related projects. In some way this determined my future line of work. In October 1940 I was drafted into the army. Because I had a secondary education, I was sent to a tank unit. It was located near the town of Zolochev [Zolochiv], Khmelnitsky Oblast. I was assigned to the 20th Tank Regiment of the 10th Tank Division in the Kiev Special Military District. Since it was uncommon to have a high school education at the time, I was sent to a school for tank radio operators and gunners for the command tanks—because not all tanks had radio units back then. We went through recruit training and took our oath. Training was really intense back then, really intense. I was trained to operate the BT-7 tank. This is a light tank with а continuous track, and it could also use regular wheels on roads. It had a 45mm cannon and was outfitted with a 71-TK1 radio unit. We were taught Morse code and radio communications. That tank only had a crew of three, so I was the radio operator and the loader. The gunner also served as the commander. I only loaded the cannon. There was a cannon with a machine gun mounted on it. So, that’s what happened before the war. —Do you remember anything about 1933, when there was hunger in Ukraine? Did it affect Dnepropetrovsk? As to the Holodomor, which has recently received so much attention in our government and our press, I can say the following. I lived in Dnepropetrovsk and my parents worked in the center of town. We did not experience any hunger at all. We received our bread, butter, and other rations. Of course we knew there was hunger, but I think that the way it is being portrayed now is completely wrong. If people did come begging from the villages, there were no more of them then than there are now. We did not experience the Holodomor, and I would like to say that it is incorrect to say that it was a Holodomor of ethnic Ukrainians. It was a food shortage that affected everyone. 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 2/13 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Savely Bass. Full, unedited interview, 2009 ID UKR008.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b49v6p ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN On the other hand, it was apparently the case that people were hoarding bread in the villages, especially the kulaks [wealthy farmers]. There was a lot of inequality in the villages. And it is wrong to say that it was the “Holodomor of ethnic Ukrainians." —But there were probably no kulaks left by 1933. No, they were still around. Collective farms were just beginning to be formed. —Did you parents have any other children? I had a brother. —Older or younger? Younger. He was born in 1929. That was our family. Our grandparents lived in Kharkov [Kharkiv]. I never knew my paternal grandparents. They perished—well, died—in the 1930s, I think. —Where were you when the war broke out and how did you spend the war years? Well, that’s a long story, but I’ll tell you anyways. On the 22nd [of June, 1941,] I was in the camp like everyone else because we had just finished our training and we were preparing . the camp was near Zlochev. —Zlochev? Yes, Zlochev, or Zolochev. They use both names. We were supposed to have an athletic competition that day. There was a cross-country run and other events. We were woken up an hour later than usual, not at five but at six. An An-2 flew overhead. Low. One of the sentries shouted that they had dropped something from the plane, and about an hour later there was an alarm: war had started. We ran to our tanks, which stood on a hillside; I think there was a church nearby. Our BT-7s were fueled up and stocked with ammunition. We got to our vehicles. About half an hour later they ordered us to get breakfast. In the evening, when all of the checks had been completed, we got our marching orders. By the 23rd [of June 1941] we were already by Rava-Rus'ka and Radzillov [?]. This was our 20th Tank Regiment, and I was [in the same tank] with the regiment commander, because we had two types of BT-7. The ones equipped with a radio had this copper . a kind of pipe, an antenna, on the turret. My tank was like that. The battle began at dawn. I should tell you that we were fighting tank against tank. As I later found out, this was a huge tank battle. I was only a private then, having served only eight or nine months, I think. This is what happened in that battle: Our commander first hit an enemy tank and then managed to get a second one. I did not shoot, just handled the shells. I was told that we suffered heavy losses. We did not have air support. I did 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 3/13 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Savely Bass. Full, unedited interview, 2009 ID UKR008.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b49v6p ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN not see anything because the hatches were closed. Then they gave us the order “Forward." But they told us that we had heavy losses, that the aviation . We would look out . We had a V2 engine, which ran on aircraft fuel. The engine hatch was not well protected because of how the ventilation was set up. That’s why many tanks caught fire from heavy air strafing. Our planes were not there. Not then. And many caught on fire, not so much from the enemy's tank fire . But we did manage to advance, and our commander said that we had crossed the border and that the enemy had retreated. The next day we defended our positions. Then our division was given the order to retreat. Our tank survived. They did hit one of its tracks, but we managed to quickly repair it by mounting a new link onto it. We then retreated. We retreated and had just one battle a bit short of Ternopol [Ternopil]. I had a very memorable encounter there: Our column was moving down the road and I looked to the side and saw that next to us on a cart was a teacher from my School No. 71 who was sent to some Western Ukrainian school. I asked my guys to stop the tank so that I could give him a hug; then we were soon on our way. We fueled up a bit. Then some officer stopped us all, organized us in a line and we started firing again. We were shooting because the Germans were moving along the same road maybe a kilometer or kilometer and a half away from us. Then we were ordered to get back on the road and only had our second battle near Berdichev [Berdychiv]. They also told us that our final destination was Piryatin [Pyryatyn]. —What? Piryatin, a town in Poltava Oblast, or maybe Vinnitsa [Vinnytsia] or Zhitomir Oblast. There we handed over our tanks and I among others was transferred to the 37th Armored Division, 74th Armored Regiment, 3rd Battalion. I was put with the battalion commander on a T-34 despite having never seen that tank before. It had a completely different radio system, too. We quickly got ready and moved to Poltava, where we were told that the Germans had crossed [the Dnieper] near Kremenchug and that they were now trying to encircle us. About 50 kilometers from Poltava our regiment again had to fight and again we didn’t have any air cover. Our tank was hit. It didn’t catch fire, but it was hit. There was an order for the crews of destroyed tanks to gather up. We gathered together while the fighting was still going on. We were then ordered to walk to Poltava. In Poltava all of us tank soldiers were put on a train and sent to Kharkov [Kharkiv]. In Kharkov we were put into freight cars and sent to Vladimir, beyond Moscow. I remember that when we were passing through Moscow people were already panicking because of the advancing Germans.