[lbo-talk] "We Won't Forget!" by Ilya Ehrenburg

[Chris Doss]

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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