1939-1941

“…In December 1939, my father was transferred to work at the Brest Railway Training School, which was reorganized from the local technical school. He was officially appointed to the position of the director of the technical school in 1940 and worked in that position up until 1963.

The last pre-war years we lived a happy life in Brest- Litovsk. Brest became a Soviet city on the 22nd of September 1939 and retained the name “Brest-Litovsk” from the czarist time.

It was an entirely different world. The Soviet propaganda trumpeted about poor, miserable and hopeless life in bourgeois Poland. Nevertheless, Brest impressed me with the cleanness of its carefully paved streets, side- walks, smart lawns in front of tidy fine houses and numerous shops. Even common bypasses looked oddly elegant…”

Brest, Trishin district, September 1939. Nazi squadron of 105-mm howitzers is bombarding the Brest Fortress, defended by the Polish garrison. The shellfire was launched from Krasnyj Dvor District. Before the artillery attack the residents of Unii Lubelskoj Street (Unii Lubelskiej, now Lenina Street) and Zygmuntovskaya Street (Zygmuntowskej, now Karl Marx Street) were evacuated.
The autumn of 1939. Polish prisoners of war on the ramp of Brest Central Station are waiting to be sent into the uncertainty — into the Soviet inland. At the beginning they were captured by the Germans. Then the Germans handed over the natives of the Western Belarus and Western Ukraine to the Red Army. Brest citizens, gathering on the pedestrian bridge, threw food and cigarettes to the prisoners.
Brest, the summer of 1940. The intersection of Pushkinskaya and 1-go Maya Streets (Batorego Street before the arrival of the Soviets, now Karbysheva Street). The canteen of Voentorg (a military store) took the quarters in the house, where the “Civic Club” (“Klub Obywatelski”) used to be until September, 1939. The German delegation, engaged in the reburial of German soldiers who had died in the battles for Brest in September 1939, was fed in that canteen.
The summer of 1940. People are queuing up for bread near the shop at the corner of Gorkogo and Pushkinskaya Streets. A bread queue was the only food queue. There were no other queues, except the queues at the cinema ticket offices. Bread was supplied to city shops by the Lansky’s bakery, which is still working. Now it is called a railway bakery.
Pre-war Brest. A Gitsel is working.
Translated from Russian by Leo Levine and Sofia Levine