Cultural Heritage Research Journal

Nataliia Tomenko

“Child’s face” of history

Illustration to personal story of Vasyl Tomenko done by Nataliia Tomenko

There are dozens of collections of articles and monographs devoted to the military everyday life of the Second World War at the front, rear, in occupation, in partisan detachments, and so on. The Soviet ideological system also did not ignore the children’s experience, but used it in a very specific way, reformatting under its own ideological needs. Thus, in the official Soviet discourse there were frequent scenes about the heroic feats of young Komsomol and pioneers and their place in the struggle against the enemy. The stories of children about their “non-heroic” experience for decades have been excluded from the general narrative of the war, because they did not correspond to the official doctrine. That is why the communicative memory of children about daily life in occupation was long unnecessary and remained to be a “silent history”.

In view of this, I want to bring back the history one more face – the faces of Romani children who, during the Second World War, and their families, were victims of mass extermination by the Nazi occupation regime. Perhaps this approach will allow us to look at the history of genocide from a completely different angle, to find out about things that are not reflected in the pages of official documents. Admittedly, I have personal connection with topic because of a family story which happened to my grandfather. The narrative talks about a period of Second World War, and about an escape from the Nazis in my hometown, Kremenchuk. At the time my family could have been eliminated but, due to humanity, we are still alive. When my grandfather was alive he always shared his personal experience during the time of Roma Genocide which I would like to share with you.

My grandfather Vasyl Tomenko

My grandfather often recollected the story of his childhood, as a German officer saved his family! This event took place at the end of the war, when the German army retreated. My grandfather’s parents lived at that time in the city of Kremenchuk, a small town situated on the banks of the Dnipro River, and is therefore divided into two parts by the river. The only passing across the river was a bridge.

Leaving Kremenchuk, the German army sent its soldiers and equipment through the bridge. When the passing to another bank had been completed, the German command decided to blow up the bridge. A crowd of civilians gathered near the bridge who wanted to move to the other side, as they knew that there would soon be a Soviet army. But Nazi soldiers and policemen (who were Ukrainians) did not let anyone out.

In that crowd there was my grandfather with my parents. He was about 2 years old at that time. He sat on the father’s cart, suddenly police came to them. They realized that my grandfather’ family was the Romani one. The fight started, the policemen began to drag the members of grandfather’s family to the side, far from the road, because they wanted to shoot them. To this hustle a German officer came to find out what was happening. The German officer ordered the policemen to stop!

My grandfather’s memory was captured with a scene when an officer grabbed him into his arms and began to play with him, he threw the child into the air and said “Kinder, kinder”. Then the German came to my great-grandfather’s and showed him a photo with his children. In some way, he explained great-grandfather that he had a few minutes to move the bridge. The officer ordered the soldiers to let Roma go to the other side.

My grandfather’s family quickly, without regretting the horse, began to pass the bridge. A few minutes after they were on the other side of the Dnipro and moved a little bit from the bridge, there was an explosion, the bridge was destroyed. That is, the members of my family were the last ones who crossed the Kremenchuk bridge built by the Germans for crossing.

To conclude I would like to outline that Every story of survivors is so valuable but when we read stories of the children it touches our hearts even more deeply. The concept is also to find connections with children’s role in current military conflicts in Donbas in Ukraine, in Syria and in many regions of Africa. Children’s memory has bright images without any agenda. These stories clearly show us a variety of strategies to survive hunger, child labor and orphandom.