Мария Степанова - In Memory of Memory

There was death everywhere that summer. On the other side of no-man’s-land Lyodik wrote to his cousin: “I think I will join the Party, so I can defeat the damned enemy in a Bolshevik spirit! Here’s to victory! Here’s to meeting again soon!”

July 26, 1942

Dear Mother,

I found out from Auntie Beti’s letter that you received the money (700 rubles). I don’t understand why you didn’t write yourself. The last time I heard from you was the postcard with Lyonya’s note on it. I really hope to get a letter from you soon. You asked me to send you a money order. I sent it and now you should receive the money every month from your local Military Office. I earn 750 rubles, but that’s with field payments, my basic wage is 600 rubles. I can only send 75% of this amount by money order, so I’ve done this for 400 rubles. I’ll send the rest in smaller amounts by mail. The money order is valid for a year from July 1943. You can get out money from August 1943. On July 23 I sent you 900 rubles. Please let me know you have received this. I wrote the address 13 ulitsa Lenina, Yalutorovsk on the money order because I couldn’t send it poste restante. Please let me know if you live a long way away from Auntie Beti. If you need to you can put a different address on the order at your local military office.

How are you feeling, Mother? I hope you aren’t getting too tired at work. Don’t overdo it, please. I’ve already told you that I had a letter from Father, I replied straightaway, but I haven’t had an answer yet. Did you get my last letter? I am in good health and doing well. In two days I’ll be twenty. I hope that I’ll be back with you and all our family by my next birthday. I wish you health and happiness. I send you all my love.

Surprisingly, soldiers and officers still received a wage in wartime. In 1939, an infantryman received between 140 and 300 rubles a month, and artillerymen and tank crew received slightly more. Soldiers on active service received additional “field payments.” For officers these payments were set at 25 percent of the basic wage. Junior Lieutenant Gimmelfarb was in command of a platoon and his minimum wage would have been 625 rubles. In the bundle with the papers that the beautiful Verochka Gimmelfarb left on her death were the yellow stubs of money transfer orders, on the back of each a few words including the unchanging “love, Lyodik.”

August 10, 1942

Dear Mother,

I received a letter from you yesterday but when I opened the envelope there were just four more envelopes inside, and no note. Maybe the letter fell out, I don’t know. I haven’t had a letter from you for a long time and I am very worried about your health because Father wrote that you were complaining of exhaustion. Please write and send details, tell me how you are. The last letter I received was from Aunt Beti a while ago now, I answered it straightaway and included a note to you as well. I wrote out a money order for you, to Aunt Beti’s address, as I couldn’t send it poste restante. The order was for 400 rubles, I couldn’t send any more. I’ll send the rest poste restante. Did you receive the 900 rubles I sent you a month ago? I got a letter from Father and a card from Uncle Fili. Father is well. Uncle Fili has been with the Pacific Fleet for nearly a year. His wife Tonya is working in a studio in Almaty. Uncle Fili promised to let me know everyone’s addresses. He wrote to you as well, he got your address from Father. I am in good health and doing well. How is everyone? Write to me about everything. Only please don’t worry about me, it’s quite unnecessary. Be happy and healthy. I send you lots of love. Love to all the family.

I look forward to your letter.

This was his last letter. On August 25, Lyubov Shaporina, writing up conversations she’d had, noted in brackets: “(I’m writing and somewhere outside the city or on its outskirts there’s prolonged gunfire, an artillery duel, the guns are muttering deep and low, threateningly, like a big storm approaching.)”

On August 27, the ill-fated Sinyavinsky Operation began. The offensive was intended to breach the Siege at its narrowest point, where besieged Soviet troops were only 16 kilometers away from the main Soviet army. But it was across an area of marshland and forest, which the Germans had reinforced with gun emplacements, dugouts, and minefields. Hundreds of meters of barbed wire, fences with gun slits surrounded by ditches of marsh water, “and the guns kept roaring and the radio plays a cheerful tune. It’s rumored the offensive has begun,” Shaporina wrote.

The 994th Rifle Regiment had been given orders to take the village of Voronovo and dig in there. Beyond a stream lay two half-destroyed hotel complexes held by the Germans. The Commanding Officer of the 1st Battalion described it all very carefully in his memoirs: the constant firing meant the infantry had to keep low to the ground, a few tanks breached the line and crossed a bridge only to find they were alone and exposed, five days of incessant and futile fighting, officers dying one after the other.

The Commanding Officer of the Third [Lyodik was in the Third Battalion] was hit in the leg, my Commissar was hit in the shoulder, the Senior Battalion Commissar had both legs ripped off. A few people were killed outright, I was hit below the knee of my right leg. Shrapnel took the flesh off down to the bone. I had two fingers ripped off my right hand, two more injured. Three pieces of shrapnel in my hip on the right-hand side. […] The blood is flowing, but for all these wounds we only have two bags of blood.

The man who wrote this returned home crippled. Lyodik Gimmelfarb’s mother received the standard notification of death. It says that her son was killed on August 27, on the very first day of the Operation. In the fog of mass slaughter, the dates and anniversaries of death could only be approximate since no one knew the actual dates. Aleksandr Gutman, who commanded a battalion in a neighboring regiment, said that they wrote “fell in battle” on all the notifications of death, as it wasn’t always possible to rescue the bodies of comrades from the battlefield and the record of the dead was poorly kept. The last moment of clarity before the darkness descends is a few hours before the beginning of battle:

The objective was clear, everyone was ready for the offensive. We passed on our defensive area to the arriving unit. The regiment went to the point of assembly, ready for the offensive, or to put it another way, we took up our first position. We ate dinner in the woods, organized sentry, and lay down to sleep as best we could. For many this would be their last night alive, but no one thought about this, everyone was filled with a single thought: to be victorious and to survive. We slept, it was a little rough, but the night passed without incident. At six in the morning we ate breakfast, smoked a cigarette. Then checked weapons, ammunition, bullets, gas masks, and rolled up our greatcoats and fixed them onto our kit. Then we waited for the order. At 8 exactly the artillery and mortars began firing along the whole Sinyavinsky line of troops of the 54th army. At 9 the soldiers began their ground offensive.

National Commissariat

Defense Union USSR

994th Rifle Regiment

September 16, 1942

№ 1058

PPS № 939

Death Notification

Your son, Lieutenant and Officer in the rifle platoon of the 7th front line company, 994th Rifle Regiment, Leonid Mikhailovich Gimmelfarb, of Moscow Lenin District, was injured and died of his injuries on August 27, 1942, in the battle for the Socialist homeland, true to his oath and displaying courage and heroism.