We Won't Forget! by Ilya Ehrenburg Published in Red Star military newspaper, August 27 1941
The wife of the German Field Marshall Franz Brumer writes her husband from the city of Marienburg in East Prussia: "You know, Franz, I will never forget the day when I heard shots for the first time. It was a week ago today. We were sleeping so well, and suddenly I woke up and heard heavy thuds. Then I suddenly realized that someone is shooting. Then we had to go to the cellar -- you know, where the kerosene is. I think we were in greater danger there than up above. Then there was further alarm on Tuesday in the day and in the evening. All in all we have been in the cellar four times. And in Elbing it was even worse, it happened eight times there. And so it looks like we have gotten a little bit of the war..."
So, Frau Brumer will never forget the day she heard her first shot! They thought they could wage war delicately, without frightening their spouses. They thought that their fiancees would not have to be disturbed by the screams French, Polish, and Serb women make before being killed.
We remember one June morning. Our country was living a peaceful life. The fields were ripe with an unheard-of harvest. In Moscow people were going to the Agricultural Exhibition. They were getting ready for the 100th anniversary of Lermontov. They were going to recreation houses. Then, the Germans attacked us. We will never forget those first shots. Our country is bristling with bayonets. Hatred has overflowed in the hearts of everyone.
We won't forget what happened then. We won't forget how the Hitlerites are destroying our cities and killing our children. We will forget nothing. We won't say anything about retribution -- it is now time for cannons to speak. But we know one thing: these SS women can no longer sleep peacefully. They have already heard the first shots. In Berlin, they have gotten acquainted with Russian bombs. The Hitlerites wanted to destroy the whole world -- Germany, they thought, will sleep peacefully in a desert, having gorged on stolen bread... This will not happen! They have already gotten, as the wife of a field marshall puts it it, "a little bit of the war." And they will get the whole thing, not in drips and drabs. They will get their fill of it. They will curse the day that Hitler sent them to our country.
They came to us singing happily:
"Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! "It will be a happy war!"
At the gates stood these SS-women -- the wives of ueber-lieutenants and the fiancees of unter-despots. These Fraus and Frauleins joined in:
"Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! "A happy war!"
Now, Elena Enzleig writes to under-officer Friz Walter from Kranzengen in East Prussia: "I was at the train station. There was an endlessly long train there. I could hardly look at the unfortunate people. It was terrible! Some of them are incredibly young. The majority are wounded in the arms or in the head. I can't open a newspaper anymore -- they are full of announcements about the dead on the Russian Front."
They're not singing anymore. Now they can see what a "happy war" is. This war will come to them. They will not be able to hide from it in any cellar.
They started it. We will finish it.
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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