The Secret Holocaust Diaries: The Untold Story of Nonna Bannister (11 page)

Suddenly everyone was wide awake, and the sparkles from children’s eyes blended with the rest of the sparkles. Joining our hands, children and grown-ups, we walked around the tree at least three times. Then, starting with Grandmother, everyone started embracing and kissing, saying, “Happy Birthday, Christ.” After all the good wishes were exchanged, and everyone hugged and kissed, we started to look for surprises, which were hanging from the tree. There were cone-shaped bags with our names on them, but we were instructed to leave all of them on the tree until we returned from church. This kept us children very excited, as we had something to look forward to for the rest of this wonderful Christmas day.

Fresh-fallen snow was at least knee-deep and covered everything in sight—Petrovich in his top hat and a split-tailed coat was already in his seat on the carriage and was trying to keep the horses still. There were three horses, decorated with wreaths made out of pine twigs and red ribbon tied in pretty bows—they also had bells on their harnesses—all of which was colorful, cheerful, and as exciting as the morning itself.

Everyone except Uncle Zhenya, who stayed behind to babysit Ludmila, were loaded into the carriage, which was affixed to the big sleigh itself. It was still dark outside—I don’t think it was past 6:00 a.m.—and the ride to the church must have taken at least twenty-five minutes. We were all so excited. Anatoly was picking on Petrovich, and everyone was laughing because he looked so small under that hat, but we were scolded by Grandmother for making fun of Petrovich.

Long before we reached the church, the sound of multiple bells could be heard in the stillness of the early morning—we knew by the sound of the bells that we were coming closer to the church. Soon we entered a long, narrow road with tall birch trees on each side, which led us all the way to the church itself. It was a unique church: though I had been in the Orthodox churches in Rostov before, I had never seen so many onion-shaped domes and steeples in one place. Each steeple was crowned with a big copper cross—even in the dark, you could see the shine they were giving out—it looked like gold in the flicker of a dim light. One could not come close to the church and go inside without first stopping to look up and admire the array of steeples and crosses—who knows how long they had been there and how many believers had looked up and admired them. Whoever thought of the idea to build a steeple in that shape was long gone but had left something behind that would last forever.

There were five smaller steeples surrounding the big one, which was standing in the middle of them so strong and proud. The cross on the big steeple was so high that it looked like it was touching Heaven itself—it seemed that the steeples were overtaking the church building. The entrance to the church was a large door, with the top of it shaped just like the steeples.

At the sides of the door there were crippled people crowding around. (I guess they were beggars.) One man didn’t have any legs, and his body was affixed to a cart, while on the opposite side there was a blind woman, and by her side was a small boy holding a cup. There were other beggars, too, around the steps that led to the big door. All this made quite an impression on us children, and I remember so well being quite frightened by what I saw.

CONTRAST •
As a child, Nonna admired the magnificence of Russian Orthodox churches, the symbolism and significance of domes and crosses and steeples. But she also noticed that impoverished people stood beneath those domes begging for food and money. People were starving in late 1932, the beginning of the
Holodomor
—a Soviet genocidal starvation policy that claimed 6–8 million lives in less than one year. The poor people frightened Nonna and “made quite an impression” on her.

There were more people arriving at the same time, but they were coming in a more usual fashion than we did, especially with Petrovich being dressed like he was. Babushka was giving us children a gentle push through the large door, while Petrovich tried to keep busy with the horses. He was hoping that we would leave him behind tending to the horses and carriage—that Grandmother would not notice him—but her eye was much quicker than his cleverness. By the time he was thinking of staying out of church, Grandmother was motioning for him to come along, and Anatoly was giving him an encouraging smile. But Petrovich was only too happy to at least remove the top hat for a while when entering the church.

Inside the church, I was absolutely overwhelmed by the surroundings, the people, and the smell of so many candles—there were hundreds and hundreds of candles—very large ones and small ones. Everyone who entered the church had to take a candle and light it from one of the large candles that were on the sides of the entrance. Then each person would proceed to the center of the church. All the people re-formed in the middle of the church, where there was a table resembling a pulpit surrounded by four huge candles.

On the table, under glass, there was a huge icon in the image of Holy Mary and Baby Jesus, and one by one people would kiss the icon (the top of the glass) and place candles around it. When it came our turn to kiss the icon, Anatoly turned around. Mama gave him a look of disapproval and pushed him toward the icon. And of course, Babushka was behind us, so we did as everyone else had done, which was to kiss the icon and proceed ahead. It was so quiet as the crowd was moving on one could hear only the shuffling of feet.

Suddenly the chorus struck a loud
Alleluia,
and it seemed as though thousands of angels had filled the church. The chorus was singing the cantata; it went on for a long time, with the priest occasionally breaking into the sound of the chorus with his deep voice. The priest’s attire was all in glitters, and it reflected the lights of the candles. He now and then would go behind the curtain and come out with the incense lantern, and he would swing the lantern—sending the aroma of incense everywhere.

Soon my little feet were getting tired, and I wanted so much to sit down, but there were no chairs since all the worshipers either stood or knelt. I dropped down to my knees as soon as I saw Grandmother do so, and for a short time my feet were resting. At least we children (and I am sure Petrovich, too) were really happy to hear the chorus strike the final note of
Amen.
Outside the church, people were hugging and kissing, cheek to cheek, and repeating what we had done at home, which was to say, “Happy Birthday, Christ.”

As we all loaded up in our carriage, the excitement was unbearable (at least for us children). We knew that in just a little while we would be opening our cone-shaped bags and filling our bellies with the most delicious treats. The church bells continued to ring, and even the horses seemed eager to head back home to the village. Petrovich started to hum a holiday tune, and soon everyone joined in, with Anatoly standing up in the carriage and playing like he was directing a choir.

It started to snow very hard, even before we reached the village. The snowflakes were huge, and they seemed to stick to our faces. We knew that if it continued to snow for a couple of hours, we would have a glorious time ahead of us for days to come. There would be enough snow to build snowmen and igloos, and the skiing that was in order for the older ones would be great. Anatoly considered himself equal to Uncle Zhenya when the subject of skiing came up, but for Halina, Aljoscha, and me, just playing in the snow and sledding were exciting enough for us. We did not have to worry about what we would be doing for the two days still ahead of us.

The gates were open, and Petrovich let us stay in the carriage until the horses reached the back of the stable. It was obvious that Petrovich was happy to get home to get out of his “Christmas uniform.” He was the first one to disappear into his cottage and change clothes; he came back in just a few minutes to put the horses away and take the carriage inside the
saraj
(sort of a garage). But before we went inside, we did not miss the chance to throw some snowballs at each other, being very careful not to hit Babushka. Anatoly grabbed a handful of snow and ran inside looking for Uncle Zhenya. Finding him, he dropped the snow behind his collar, making Uncle Zhenya chase him around the kitchen until Grandmother waved her hand, indicating that everything had to come to order at once. Anatoly had to clean up the wet puddle from the snow. But no one seemed to care about naughtiness, since there was so much excitement around us.

15: Christmas Day

1932

While we younger children were busy opening our “cones” from the Christmas tree, Grandmother and Mama were in the kitchen uncovering all the food, which had taken many days to prepare. A magnificent aroma was coming out of the kitchen, and soon the whole house was filled with the smell of vanilla, almond, ginger, and many kinds of good smells that go with a holiday feast. I really do not remember eating just three meals that day. The food was on tables everywhere, and we ate and ate. It seemed that for the next twelve days, all we did was eat! The samovar was brewing tea around the clock, and the grown-ups were doing a lot of reminiscing—except for Uncle Leonid, who was spending much of his time at the cottage with Petrovich. They were playing checkers and talking a lot about times that were now in the past. Uncle Leonid was always the quiet one. I never remember him saying much or ever being angry when he was around us—he always had a gentle look on his face, and he smiled at lot.

Uncle Zhenya was just the opposite—he was a very exciting person. His almost-black eyes would sparkle, and he had a certain wit about him. I guess he was more like Grandfather Yakov than any of the other children, and perhaps this was why Grandmother wanted him to become a Cossack, too. Uncle Zhenya and Aunt Xenja were the only ones in the family to inherit the dark brown eyes my grandfather had. The rest of my uncles and Aunt Tonja had blue or hazel eyes, like Grandmother.

Just as we had hoped, it continued to snow all day long, piling the sticky snow everywhere. The pond was covered with at least two feet of snow, and unless you knew where it was, you could not even tell a pond was there. It was the same everywhere—WHITE! Of course, there was no danger of falling into the pond, since the water had been frozen solid for a long time before it began to snow—but it was at the pond where everyone had the most fun. The snow was pushed from side to side, thus freeing the ice for skating. Uncle Zhenya and Anatoly were the experts on the ice. For Halina and me there were ice-skating lessons ahead.

First, we had to learn to skate with one ice skate made of wood—not metal. Pushing with one free foot, we went skating on the one skate. The next step was learning how to stand on two ice skates, then how to walk with the skates on snow before we were allowed to walk on the ice. It seemed so easy to walk on skates—we simply had to learn to balance ourselves. Once we learned to balance ourselves on both skates—we just had to slowly move, pushing the upper part of our bodies forward. However, there were a few falls before we really caught on—and falling on ice did hurt a little. It seemed that when we fell on ice, we landed on our tailbones—so we had somebody go along with us for a while and give us some support by holding our shoulders from the back until we were sure of ourselves. Once we took the first few steps by ourselves, we succeeded. Nothing gave us more pride and joy—we felt like a bird that has just learned to fly.

There were different kinds of skates to choose from—some had curved fronts, and we used them on hard, pressed-down snow rather than on ice. The ones with sharp points and a very thin bottom (on the sides they were kind of “blown-up”) were used only on solid ice, like we had on the pond. We did not have “special shoes” then, and the skates were attached by grips that were tightened down by a skate key to the soles of any strong, high-top shoes. The wooden skates (with the wide bottoms) were used by the younger beginners and were tied with strong leather strings. The other skates were made of different kinds of metal, and the most expensive ones (which were used by the experts) were made out of sterling silver. Anatoly was given a pair of silver skates on his twelfth birthday—I shall never forget the happy look on his face when he opened the box and found those silver skates.

It always seemed that there were a lot of other children playing and skating on the pond, and there was always one bad kid who would cause a problem. There were pranks that the older kids pulled on the younger ones, and they were very naughty and dangerous pranks. Someone would say, “Take your mittens off and touch the bottom of your skate” after skating for a while; the fingers would get “glued” to the metal of the skates from the frost. Sometimes it would peel the skin right off the fingers, and it would hurt very badly. But the worst yet would be to touch the skate with your tongue—it would always cause a serious injury to the tongue, and the child would have to be taken to the doctor. Of course, we had plenty of protection from Uncle Zhenya and Uncle Leonid, and we were instructed not to listen to the other kids. When someone was caught pulling a prank on our pond, they were chased away, and never allowed to come back!