Gateway 2021

Miniscule and Insignificant Complaints Introduction It was May 2020, several weeks since school had gone virtual because of Covid-19. I won’t lie, at first it was really exciting not to have to awaken at 5:45 am and waste three hours of my life on the bus commuting to and from school. What a luxury it was to wake up with rays of the sun shining through my window, as opposed to being greeted by complete darkness. The quarantine didn’t seem like such a terrible thing to me. As the pandemic continued to rage, however, I began to realize how many things I took for granted. I was no longer able to get off my school bus and walk to the supermarket to buy snacks, or sleep over at my friends’ houses on weekends, or see my grandparents and cousins. On a particularly rainy and dingy Sunday morning, I was in a gloomy mood and so was my sister. As I brushed my teeth and went to get my usual breakfast of Nature Valley cereal and milk, my mother called me and my sister into the living room. Tired of hearing us complain about how ‘terrible’ our lives were during this pandemic, she decided to have my great aunt Mina tell us the story of her childhood.

Mina I vividly remember running through a grassy field, warm rays of sunshine beaming down on my face. My friends and I are playing Salochki, falling into the grass, winded. I look up at the sky with a piece of hay in my mouth, feeling tranquil and happy. Little did I know, my life would never be the same again. This was June 21, 1941.

Early the next morning, I heard a radio announcement that Nazi Germany had invaded the Soviet Union without a declaration of war. In a matter of days, my father was enlisted in the army. My mother cried in the shadows, trying to hide her tears. From that point on I lived through a lot of “lasts” — the last time I saw my father alive, the last time I slept in my childhood bed, the last time I played blissfully with my friends. There were constant bombing raids, and we ran for shelter together as the sirens wailed through our town of Melitopol. Over the next few weeks, the sirens became a familiar sound. “You must turn off the lights, so as not to make the house an easy target,” Mother would say. And so the darkness became our life.

One night, the siren started singing its cruel song, piercing the sticky summer air. Half asleep, I got up and started for the door. I pushed, but it wouldn’t budge. I started screaming, trying to shout over the aggressive shriek of the siren to warn my mother. She jumped out of bed, frantically grabbed the chair and placed it next to the window so I could climb out of our one-story house. “Minachka, run, run to the shelter, follow the people, I will be right behind you, I will find you…” she shouted with despair. Tears burned my cheeks as I darted for safety, my legs quaking from fear. The shelter was dark, crowded, people packed in shoulder-to-shoulder. The cacophony of babies crying, sirens wailing and bombs exploding were no match for the one thought weighing heavy as a rock inside my head, “Will I ever see my mother and sister again?” I stayed inside the shelter until morning. With the sunrise, a new symphony of sounds filled the air — people shouting the names of their loved ones, some completely hysterical, others sobbing uncontrollably, on the verge of madness. I was losing hope. A few excruciating hours later, I heard someone say, “Lucy, Lucy, she’s here!” I saw my mother, holding my sister in her arms, rushing into the shelter. I think this was the happiest moment of my life.

Our house was completely destroyed by the air raid. We went to our relatives in a nearby village, and they offered to take in my three-year-old sister. “Lucy, you can get away with Minachka but the three-year-old will only slow you down. Leave her with us, we will provide good care for her,” they said. My mother, always of an iron will, refused. Later, we learned that when the Nazis occupied that village, all of our relatives were buried alive. By some miracle, we got on the last train out of Ukraine and began our long, exhausting journey to distant Siberia, a whole other story. We never returned to sunny Ukraine, there was nowhere and no one to return to…

David I hear a deep sadness in her voice and an occasional sob which makes me ponder the extent of human cruelty.

Suddenly, Mina pauses: “Ну а как ваши дела?” she asks.

— David Goldfarb 21