Kazimír Morozovič

“I admired him, because I always got up really early in the morning, and so did he. In summer he used to go to exercise in the garden, and he ran and exercised there. In winter he rubbed his body with snow. He washed his face and his body with snow. I thought: I will do that, too. I thus ran out and I ran around twice, it was in winter and I was barefoot, and I could endure this, but I could not endure washing myself with snow. That was something terrible and I said to myself afterwards that I would never go out to exercise again. It was so freezing cold there that whenever I went out, my mom dressed me properly before she let me go. When there was minus ten or twenty degrees centigrade, it was considered warm.”

“It was in 1943 in Yefremov. That’s where the paratrooper brigade was formed. Paratroopers were being trained there, and we, children, were going to the place and watching them as they were jumping from hot air balloons. Strong winds blew there, and when they hit the ground, the wind always dragged them over the field and we thought it was funny. The children’s home was in a large block of houses. Half of it had been bombed out and the other half was quite fine, and so we all lived there. I spent about half the time in the children’s home and the other half with my parents. They were in Yefremov in the replacement regiment and they were part of the children’s home. My father was in charge of all food supplies there, and my mother worked in the kitchen.” Interviewer: “Tell us how it was there for you, when you were a six- or seven-year-old child?” “I had to go to school there. Svoboda ordered this. All children had to go to school there so that they would not be like savages. And there was a lot of space where we could play. There was the adjacent house with a burnt ground next to it. We did not miss anything. We were roaming the place, climbing on the ruins which were left from the house... it was wonderful.”