The Bryansk Forest Sternly Stirred

Memories of a Partisan Past

Just before the onset of the Second World War, my 83-year-old neighbor Olga Ivanovna had a dream. The wooden chest in her entryway stood empty with the lid open. Clothes and other belongings were strewn out over the floor. She awoke and prodded her husband, Pavel, telling him to go look. He came back and said all was well. She dreamed it again. Waking up, she lit a candle and went to check for herself. Everything was in its place. The next day she asked one of the elder women in the village about the dream. The woman said the dream meant Olga Ivanovna would become a widow. Olga Ivanovna, then 20 and pregnant with her second child, tried to put it out of her head.

On June 22, 1941, Olga Ivanovna, eight months pregnant, was cleaning out the grain mill in the field with some other women, when a man from the village of Chukhrai shouted to them to hurry back. All the villagers gathered in front of the store, where the district policeman from Suzemka, a town in the southern Bryansk Province, awaited them.

“I bear sad news,” he said. “Hitler has attacked us. The war has begun.”

All the able men in the village received notice soon after and were drafted into the Soviet Red Army. Olga Ivanovna’s husband Pavel went to the enlistment office and asked to be let off until his child was born.

“At least until I find out if it is a girl or a boy,” he pleaded.

They said he could stay until the third and final mobilization on August 12, when the last of the men – the old, the young, the sick, and even the authorities – were to be sent to war.

On July 12, 1941, Olga Ivanovna gave birth to a healthy girl, Anastasia. When Pavel was enlisted a month later, Olga Ivanovna accompanied him as far as the nearby river. Pavel carried their newborn on one arm and their two-year old girl on the other.

At the riverbank, Pavel looked at the infant sorrowfully and said, “I wish God would take you from your mother to unbind her hands.”

That was the last time Olga Ivanovna saw him.

The villagers of Chukhrai soon learned that Hitler’s army was overrunning Bryansk and the neighboring regions of Oryol and Smolensk, renaming towns and streets as they went and installing Nazi power. By November 1941, the Germans had reached the outskirts of Moscow, taking Tula and Kursk on the way.

The Nazis appointed Russians who had opposed the Soviet regime as Burgomasters of newly-occupied towns and villages. A former kulak who had refused to join the collective farm was named head of Chukhrai. Russians working for the Nazis were called Politsai. These Nazi collaborators forced people to work in the factories and fields from dawn until dusk. Livestock and grain supplies were seized and sent to Germany. Hundreds of thousands of people were sent there as well – for so-called “voluntary work programs.”

But the Nazis did not gain control of Chukhrai or the surrounding countryside. Russians who had been left behind enemy lines, those who had returned home, and boys just learning to fight, created a resistance movement. They formed covert Partisan groups that moved under the dense cover of the Bryansk Forest. Czechs, Slovaks, and Hungarians defecting from the Nazi army joined them. The Partisans raided villages and towns to remove traitors working for the Germans and attacked Nazi posts and supply depots.

The Soviet government supported the Partisan movement, hailing it as an effective way to fight behind enemy lines in occupied territories. Nightly, Soviet airplanes flew over the Bryansk Forest (a belt of dense forest extending 100 miles through the Bryansk Province and into the Ukraine), dropping thousands of parachutes with sacks of weapons, ammunition, food, and army garb. With support from Moscow and assistance from the surrounding villages, Partisans – numbering more than 60,000 – began to gain control of the Bryansk Forest. They ousted the enemy from significant areas, forcing them from 500 towns in what was then Oryol Province and freeing more than 200,000 people by April 1942. They created three Partisan-controlled zones in the southern, western, and northern portions of present-day Bryansk region.

The village of Chukhrai, where I live with my husband Igor, and neighboring Smelizh, were in the heart of the Southern Partisan Zone. The villagers assisted the Partisans in every way possible. They sewed undergarments from parachutes and jackets from the burlap bags dropped from airplanes. They provided food and shelter. My friend Olga Ivanovna remembers when 22 Partisans spent the night on her floor. She made a pot of porridge to feed them. One was a woman. Another night, a group brought a sack of flour and asked her to bake bread. Some of the Partisan groups were bandits, Olga said, especially those formed of men from other regions. They would take the last potato from a child and snatch a chicken out of the coop to boot.

Hitler announced that any person caught aiding, supplying, or hiding Partisans would be executed and his property destroyed. Chukhrai and other villages in the Bryansk Partisan Zones came under fire. Nazi warplanes flew from the German airbase in Lokot, 30 miles away. They flew over Chukhrai daily, each time dropping bombs. Even today, in our paddock, there are craters left behind by the bombing. They fill with rainwater in the spring, and our horses drink from them. My husband Igor found several bombshells on his land when he first moved here. Now the exploded casings line the stoop by our front door, below a hanging display of other rusted war paraphernalia, such as a Nazi bayonet and folding shovel. Our postman uses one of the hollow bomb casings as an ashtray when he pauses on our porch stoop after delivering the mail.

During the air raids, low-flying planes skimmed the roofs of Chukhrai, firing off rounds of bullets, perforating every house. One small boy was shot through the leg while asleep in bed. Anti-aircraft guns placed around the village managed to shoot down only one Nazi plane in the course of the war. A 65-year-old man known as Belik from Smelizh found the propeller as a boy and later melted it down to make cast-iron pots.

The villagers dug trenches around Chukhrai and sought shelter in them during the bomb raids. I can still see the eroded furrows in the meadow beyond the lake. When it became too dangerous for them to remain near Chukhrai in daylight hours, they hid in the woods. The women took their children and elderly to the cover of the woods before dawn, returning to the village only after dark, stealing out to the garden plots they hastily tended for food.

The Partisans created a makeshift airfield near Smelizh, six miles from our village of Chukhrai, providing a connection to the Red Army stationed in areas to the east. Soviet planes were able to land at night in total darkness, carrying supplies and medicine. The Partisans lit fires to mark a dummy airstrip in Chukhrai – where our paddock is today. While the Germans bombed the field where our horses now graze, riddling it with craters, Soviet planes landed in the dark near Smelizh. The planes were quickly pulled under the cover of the trees, where they were unloaded and, if necessary, repaired. Filled anew with the sick and wounded, the planes departed before dawn to Soviet-controlled territory. Despite the harrowing conditions, not a single plane crash was recorded on the Smelizh airfield during the war.

On November 6, 1942, the poet Anatoly Safronov arrived in Smelizh aboard one such airplane. He delivered a song he had written with composer Sigizmund Katz for the Bryansk Partisans. They understood that it couldn’t be a marching song, because Partisans don’t march. Nor could stealthy Partisans sing loudly. The result was a song that could be sung softly in chorus – an epic hymn that would become well-known throughout Russia and the anthem for the Bryansk Province. Safronov sang the song that November night for the Partisans there to greet him. They cheered and hugged him, begging him to sing it again and again, which he did.

The Bryansk Forest sternly stirred.

A blue haze descended like a veil .

And all around, the pines heard

How Partisans strode down the trail.

Down a hidden trail amid the birch,

Hurrying through the dense thickets.

And swung over the shoulder, each

Held a rifle loaded with cast bullets.

And in the dark of night, to the enemy,

To the Fascist command they dashed.

And bullets between the tree trunks

In the Bryansk oak woods crashed.

In the forest, the foe finds no shelter,

Grenades tear through the trees.

And a commander yells to them after,

“Smash the invaders, boys!”

The Bryansk Forest sternly stirred.

A blue haze descended like a veil.

And all around, the pines heard

How Partisans strode to victory.

As the Partisans’ new war mantra filtered through the Bryansk Forest, the Nazis escalated the bombing in Partisan country, demolishing villages and towns. By the spring of 1943, the villagers of Chukhrai were forced to abandon their homes entirely and move to the woods, where they dug earthen bunkers to shelter their families. They fortified the walls and roof of each pit with logs, shoveling dirt over the top and laying pine bows to camouflage the shelters from above. They stuffed moss into slits and holes to keep the bunkers warm and to muffle the sound of children crying, in case the Nazis came near. They stashed food, weapons, and supplies in pits in the surrounding woods.

Partisans also inhabited such bunkers. One bunker off the road between Chukhrai and Smelizh housed a printing press where an underground Partisan newspaper was published. Another nearby bunker served as a Partisan hospital, housing the sick and wounded. In the makeshift hospital, cots were made from poles laced together with twine and covered with beds of moss. Doctors, nurses, and even veterinarians performed hundreds of complicated operations on a square wooden platform in the corner near the door, often without medication or anesthesia. With time, these structures gradually decayed, but recognizable bunkers can still be seen in the woods today. The hospital was recently restored as a historical monument. I have ducked inside many times, and I cannot imagine how doctors must have operated, or how wounded Partisans recuperated in the dark, damp, and dirty quarters.

In the summer of 1943, as the Nazi and Soviet armies prepared for what proved to be a decisive encounter and the greatest tank battle in history, at Kurskaya Duga (Kursk Arch), about 100 miles southeast of Bryansk, the Bryansk Partisans escalated their clandestine operations behind enemy lines. Coordinating with the Red Army on the front, the Partisans derailed trains and blew up railroad tracks and bridges throughout the region, cutting Nazi supply lines. In the course of the war, the Bryansk Partisans would derail more than 1,000 armored trains, shoot down 120 airplanes, destroy 180 miles of railroad tracks and over 4,000 wooden bridges, raid dozens of Nazi command centers and garrisons, and cause some 100,000 Nazi casualties.

The Nazis diverted five divisions from the front lines to expel the Partisans from the Bryansk Forest. They formed a chain and combed the woods around Chukhrai and Smelizh, where the Southern Partisan Zone was headquartered. The Nazis hoped to push the Partisans out onto the open floodplain of the nearby Desna River, but their adversary placed 230 gunners in a line and breached the Nazi chain. The Partisans escaped and headed towards the front. The people from nearby villages weren’t so lucky and remained within the Nazi loop.

On May 30, 1943, the Nazis rounded up all those found
in the forests near Chukhrai, driving them from their earthen bunkers. The people hastily gathered food and supplies. They wrapped extra clothes around their waists to trade for food. Those who had cows took them along. The Nazis herded them through the village and down the road to Smelizh, burning any remaining houses on the way by throwing blazing bottles into the windows. Anyone who could not keep up with the column was shot on the spot.

The terrified villagers spent the night in the field near Smelizh and were joined the next day by more people evicted from the forests around that village. They then trudged the 30 miles to the Nazi base in Lokot, walking in a guarded, mile-long human column that grew with each Partisan village passed. They ate raw potatoes and nibbled on flour. Women carried their infants. Older children walked, but none dared complain. One woman carried a newborn who died in her arms. She carried the dead child 15 miles until the procession paused for a moment, when she buried it on the side of the road.

Some were lucky and escaped from the column that day. As they left Partisan country and came to a village under Nazi control on the road to Lokot, one woman leading a cow called to a local villager, “Pretend I am your family and I will give you my cow.” The woman took her in for the cow.

People watching the procession cried to those in the column that the Nazis were executing everyone in Lokot. One boy slid out of the column and ducked between two women walking past. A Politsai came after him, but the women cried, “He’s ours!” The boy stayed with the women for the next year.

When the displaced villagers arrived in Lokot that evening, their captors directed them into a bathhouse to be washed and rid of lice. Men were steered one way and women and children another. Families were split. There was no time for goodbyes. The men and women were driven into separate enclosures with 12 rows of barbed wire. The Nazis seized their cows and other livestock. They slept on the ground. The Nazis gave them boiled potatoes and water. My friend Olga Ivanovna recalls that when a German soldier brought potatoes, he personally handed them out to each individual. However, when a Russian Politsai delivered the potatoes, he heaved the whole pot through the fence. The prisoners shoved each other to get to the food. Children were crushed and smothered. If a German brought water, he would ladle it into the tin cans, jars, or cups of each prisoner, but if a Politsai brought the water, he would simply spray the crowd and leave.

Soon after the prisoners arrived, the Nazis ordered all the men and boys over 12 at the camp executed. The Politsai lined them up along a pit within view of their mothers, wives, children, and grandchildren. The executioners told them, “Stand with your own and you’ll lie together.” They fired from four machine guns. The men folded into the pit one by one. Then they were buried, some still alive. Witnesses say that the earth groaned and heaved for three days. Partisans were treated differently – they were burned alive for all to see.

A few days passed and the Politsai handed the remaining women and children shovels and led them from the camp into a field. The prisoners dug a long trench. The Politsai told them they would be executed and they should stand near their loved ones. Machine guns were positioned, but before they could be fired, the guard at the camp changed. According to Olga Ivanovna, the German officer stepped down and the new officer, a Hungarian working for the Nazis, called off the execution.

After nearly two months in the Lokot camp, the women and children were loaded into 80 cattle cars and taken to Minsk. From Minsk, some women were sent to Germany to work in forced labor camps. Women with children stayed in the cattle cars for another week, evidently until the Germans figured out what to do with them. A week later, Olga Ivanovna’s cattle car was hitched to a locomotive with a dozen other cars and sent to Ukraine. When the train stopped, a stout German officer opened the doors.

“Who wants to go to Germany to work as a volunteer?” he asked. “Food and shelter will be provided.”

No one volunteered.

“Then you will all be sent to work in the kolkhozy in Nazi-controlled territory.”

Dozens of horse-drawn carts rolled down to the train and took them away. The Ukrainian coachmen told them to make sure they were in the same cart as their kin, or they might end up in different villages.

Olga Ivanovna, her sister, two sisters-in-law, and their 15 children ended up in a small Ukrainian village called Kruty, along with nine other families from Chukhrai. They lived in the school and begged for food from the other villagers. For reasons Olga Ivanovna couldn’t understand, the Politsai collaborators didn’t allow them to work in the fields for food. Perhaps the Politsai didn’t trust them because they were from Partisan country. Their only food was potatoes given to them by kindhearted villagers. They cooked them on a fire pit outside the school. One particularly malicious Politsai would come by each evening and spit in the kettle. A woman living with them had an infant. The Politsai would tear the nursing child away from its mother’s breast and spit in its face, saying nastily, “That’s a budding Partisan.” The baby eventually died.

Victorious after the Nazi retreat from Kurskaya Duga on July 17, 1943, the Red Army began to push Hitler’s troops out of Russia. Suzemka – in the Southern Partisan Zone – was freed from occupation on September 5, 1943. The capital city of Bryansk was freed on September 17. The two dates are still marked annually in the Bryansk Province. Last fall, I joined veterans and Partisans as they gathered around the restored field hospital and a monument to the Partisans erected near the wartime airfield in Smelizh.

Retreating, some Nazis came to the Ukrainian village where the Chukhrai families were living. They occupied the school, evicting the families. To escape, the women pushed their children out the window and jumped out after them. Some of the villagers let the refugees sleep on their floors. That night in the village, Partisans killed two Nazis guarding a hangar where 200 confiscated horses were being held. The next day, the Nazis sent troops to retaliate for the murders. They tossed shells into a few of the houses, intending to destroy everything and everyone in the Ukrainian village. But the Nazis retreated when the Partisans blew up the bridge, mill, and three grain storage silos. The Red Army soon followed, ousting the Nazis further. It was October 1943. The survivors were free.

It wasn’t until 1944, however, that the villagers returned to the charred remains of their homes in what was once Chukhrai, to pick up the pieces and begin life anew.  RL