Aged 92, Viktor Gladyshev is the protagonist of a “docufiction,” or the cinematic combination of documentary and fiction, that traces his childhood in a corner of Russia occupied by the Nazis during World War II (WWII).
Gladyshev lived under the German occupation for three months as a child and only narrowly avoided being executed at the age of eight.
Sitting in his modest apartment just outside Moscow, he said he remembers the 1941 occupation “as if it were yesterday.”
Photo: AFP
His experience is recounted in Iyunskaya polyn (June Wormwood), a film by Yuliya Bocharova released last month, in the run-up to Victory Day celebrations in Moscow on Friday next week.
The film about his life is supported by the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives, a Kremlin-affiliated body.
Russian authorities have sought to stir up patriotic fervor around the 80th anniversary of WWII victory to boost support for its offensive on Ukraine, which began in 2022.
The Kremlin portrays the current conflict as a continuation of the one against Hitler, claiming to be fighting Ukrainian “neo-Nazis.”
Hitler’s troops invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, and three months later, Gladyshev’s father left for the front. He would die there in 1943.
Aged just eight, Gladyshev, the youngest in a large family, found himself orphaned, as his mother had died before the war.
The children moved in with their aunt and uncle in the village of Smolino, near Naro-Fominsk, 70km southwest of Moscow.
‘STALIN IS KAPUTT’
In the autumn of 1941, German soldiers entered the village without firing a shot.
“Moscow is kaputt, Stalin is kaputt, they shouted at us,” recalled Gladyshev, looking at the past through his pale blue eyes. Nine Germans moved into their house. In the evening, the children had to take the German soldiers’ boots off, and in the streets, Russians were ordered to stop every time they ran across a German.
Despite knowing that picking up a Soviet leaflet could mean death, one day he found one and could not resist the urge to tell everyone about it.
“The leaflet read that the enemy had been stopped just near Naro-Fominsk. I told everyone and soon became the hero of the village,” Gladyshev said with a disarming smile.
The morning after, “they took me out for the execution,” he continued unemotionally.
“When I saw the dark barrel of a rifle pointed at my face, I knew I was going to die,” Gladyshev said. “But in that moment, I was rather more interested to see up close how the bullet would be going out of the barrel of the gun.”
Suddenly, his uncle Ivan “threw himself at the German and pinned his rifle to the ground,” he said.
The uncle was then brutally beaten up, but he survived thanks to an Austrian doctor who intervened.
VICTORY PARADES
In October 1941, the evacuation of Moscow was announced as Hitler’s forces approached the capital.
In Smolino, the German unit was replaced by a military orchestra. The mood had changed: The musicians started constantly rehearsing in the village.
Despite the freezing cold, Gladyshev said he followed each rehearsal and watched the conductor closely.
“I became obsessed with the brass instruments,” he said.
The locals found out that the Germans were preparing for a “Victory Parade” on Red Square. However, it was not to be, as the Red Army had already launched a counter-offensive around Moscow in December. The Nazis retreated, taking the villagers with them on a harrowing journey as human shields.
In a village near Borovsk, 130km southwest of Moscow, Gladyshev said he remembers hearing heartbreaking cries coming from a house with boarded-up windows and doors: The inhabitants were being burned alive by Nazi troops.
“There were some good Germans, too,” he said suddenly and smiled.
One officer lent him a knife to cut a piece of meat from a frozen horse’s carcass.
In December 1941, Gladyshev managed to escape and reach Soviet soldiers. He went on to become a trumpet player and in the end it was he, not the German army’s musicians, who got to take part in about 15 Victory Day parades on Red Square.
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