What was life like for children of war? Difficult trials and adult achievements.

The Great Patriotic War was a terrible tragedy for the entire Soviet people. Famine, devastation, and other hardships of the war years did not spare even the youngest residents of the USSR. Today, the term " children of war" is often heard. How many children lived in the Byelorussian SSR at the outbreak of the war? What horrors did young Belarusians endure who remained in the occupied territories? How were Red Army soldiers and partisans helped? Irina Lebedeva, Deputy Dean of the Faculty of History at Belarusian State University, answered these and other questions in the "In the Topic. History" project on the BELTA YouTube channel.
How many children remained in the Byelorussian SSR after the war began

? After the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War, approximately 3 million children were unable to evacuate from the Byelorussian SSR. Young Belarusians who remained in the occupied territories witnessed the monstrous crimes of the Nazi invaders. Children witnessed the death of their nearest and dearest, endured hunger and devastation, and worked alongside adults for more than ten hours a day...

"The life of a child during wartime was a trial in itself. After all, war and childhood are incompatible concepts. You could say they were no longer children, but little participants in the war," says Irina Lebedeva.

The hunger that children endured in the occupied territories can be vividly illustrated by MILK. During the war, milk was measured not in liters, but in saucers! And it was a great joy for a child to be able to obtain that saucer of milk.

"Food was generally very meager. More often than not, after a hard day's work, little boys and girls literally subsisted on what they could find. They gathered mushrooms, berries in the forest —in short, whatever came to hand," explains the historian.

It's no surprise that such inhumane ordeals left their mark not only on the child's inner world, but also on their appearance. Many teenagers, aged 14 or 15, looked like old men, gray-haired and wrinkled. This is also due to the cruelty the Nazis and their collaborators inflicted on children in the occupied territories.

What the Nazis did to children in the occupied territories

: The occupiers not only made no allowances for children, but also exploited their age, trusting attitude, and spontaneity. For example, they deceived them into giving them information about partisans and Red Army soldiers. Or they simply cruelly abused them. 

"There is a well-known case, for example: At the Orsha railway junction, a German soldier tied a toy mine to a string to attract the attention of a small boy. The child pulled the toy and ended up with one arm missing and a torn lip. All this happened in front of other children," Irina Lebedeva explains, citing one such atrocity.
The strongest and healthiest children were taken to work in Germany or used as blood and organ donors for German soldiers. The Krasny Bereg concentration camp, through which approximately 2,000 children passed, was established for these purposes.

"When children were taken from their mothers, crowds of women gathered daily near Krasny Bereg, near the barbed wire surrounding the camp. To disperse these women, the Germans shot them in the legs. It's a terrifying scene, difficult to even imagine," the historian notes. Children's groups were

also organized in 16 concentration camps across Belarus. "There are known cases of children being hung by their armpits, their heels cut, and their blood drawn," says Irina Lebedeva.

Therefore, one of the primary tasks of the partisans and Red Army units was the evacuation of orphanages that, for one reason or another, remained in the occupied territory of Belarus. But the children themselves often helped the Red Army soldiers and partisans fight the Nazi occupiers.

Why Children Wanted to Participate in the War

: "Children were driven by a desire to recapture their childhood. And also by pain for their tormented native land, for the destroyed world, for their parents killed before their eyes," notes Irina Lebedeva.

The Nazis were often genuinely amazed by the heroic deeds performed by ordinary children and teenagers. When, for one reason or another, they were captured, the German occupiers were surprised by how young these saboteurs or scouts were.

"What horrified me when I studied this topic... The Nazis, on the one hand, were amazed by the fortitude and heroism of these little heroes. But on the other hand, they suffered the same torture as adults. They burned their cheeks with cigarettes, broke their spines... I don't want to delve into these horrors. But what's truly important is that these little heroes said nothing during interrogations," the historian added.
What Life Was Like for Children in Partisan Units:

Most often, children performed reconnaissance and sabotage work. They distributed leaflets, obtained important information, helped deliver food , and poisoned Nazi food supplies. At the same time, the children found ways to learn regular school subjects.

"It's a well-known fact that during the war, schools were organized in partisan detachments. But many children later said that they didn't learn to write the words 'mama' and 'papa.' They simply avoided these words because they were too painful. Similarly, they didn't learn children's songs, sayings, or proverbs, but most often learned from wartime songs," the historian explains. "The teachers were ordinary people—the same partisans or women who, one way or another, remained in the partisan detachment."At the same time, after the end of the war, children very successfully passed exams for further education in middle and high school."

Irina Lebedeva believes that schooling, even in such difficult conditions, was a kind of refuge and a sense of normalcy, allowing children to briefly feel like children. This was important not only for them but also for the adults.

However, the children's lives in partisan units were far from comfortable. The children were confined to limited space, so they had no opportunity for simple childish games. They often had to endure the cold, as starting a fire was often difficult, risking the discovery of the partisan camp. For the same reasons, they mostly ate cold food.

"Just recently, Vladimir Vavulo's book, 'Little Soldiers of the Great War,' was published, collecting around 1,500 biographies of child participants in the war. It includes Kolya Goyshik, Lidiya Demesh, and many, many other children who fought like adults," Irina Lebedeva added.

Why the word "family" almost never appears in the memoirs of children of war?

"Reading children's memoirs, I never encountered the definition of family at all. It sometimes happened that relatives were together for very short periods. One must consider the scale of the Nazi punitive operations. As a rule, the victims were adults and children who were unable to escape. And the concept of a traditional nuclear family, it seems to me, disappeared completely during the war. At that time, everyone was family," says Irina Lebedeva.

According to the historian, the Great Patriotic War saw the highest degree of consolidation among the Soviet people: "There are known cases where local residents helped evacuated children in orphanages, for example in Tashkent, with food and clothing. Meanwhile, these local residents had hungry children themselves. And this is further evidence that they were one big family. This sense of wholeness, unity, and the feeling of being supported by family was very important for victory."

Often, for children who lost their parents, the adults who found them became family. The concept of "children of the regiment" emerged—children supported by military units and formations.

"Furthermore, when our Red Army marched through Germany on the eve of Victory, Red Army soldiers rescued small German children and adopted them," the historian notes. "Despite their personal tragedies and dramas, Soviet people did not cease to be human. And this, too, is probably a very important moment in the approach of Victory. Because a person must always remain human."

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