'Ours Arrived! How Joyous We Were!': Memory of Occupation, Trauma, and Liberation in Kursk Oblast, 1941-1943

• In Event: Paradoxes of Liberation: War and Deliverance in Soviet and Post-Soviet Contexts

Abstract

The Wehrmacht took control of Kursk Oblast in 1941 and 42. The German soldiers viewed the Soviet peasants with utter contempt, yet still relied on them for food, quartering, and labor. Every civilian in Kursk experienced the presence of the occupiers either directly through pillage, abuse, or the violence of combat, or indirectly through starvation and general privation. The Red Army returned in February and March 1943, delivering the people of Kursk from sixteen months of terror. While Soviet forces liberated Kursk’s civilians, it imposed its own demands for labor and support, yet with significantly less brutality than the previous regime.
While conducting archival research in Kursk in 2011-12, I arranged interviews with over a dozen individuals who experienced the German occupation, Red Army liberation, and mobilization to provide labor for military projects in preparation for the German 1943 summer offensive. While I sought to learn about daily life during the Red Army’s liberation and mobilization, I realized that the narratives these individuals provided offered a richer description of the experiences of children during wartime. This paper will focus on the interactions these people, as youths, had with Wehrmacht and Red Army soldiers. In so doing, it will describe the varieties of trauma these individuals experienced under German occupation and also the joy and relief they felt upon the return of “Our Soldiers.”

Author

• Daniel Giblin, The Citadel