What a young partisan, who was not broken by either the bullying of the fascists or paralysis, told in his memoirs written with teeth

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Much is known about the atrocities of the fascists. It was perhaps easier for the partisans who fell into their clutches to accept death immediately than to die as a result of long torment. The Soviet schoolboy Kolya Pechenenko managed to endure all the tortures of the Gestapo. And he stayed alive. Therefore, he is a double hero. One of the most sophisticated bullying that the boy experienced looked like this: they brought him to execution, put on our noose, but at the very last second the execution was canceled …

A partisan detachment became his new family

The war found 11-year-old Kolya in the pioneer camp "Orlyonok", located not far from Kiev and Cherkassy, in the town of Kholodny Yar. In June 1941, he, along with other guys, was brought here on vacation, introduced to the counselors - a new shift was opening. And then it became known that the war had begun and the Germans approached Kiev.

The schoolchildren were ordered to evacuate, but Kolya fled. After long wanderings, he settled in one of the local villages - at that time he found out that his mother was seriously wounded and she was evacuated, so there was no point in returning to his native village. As a result, the boy got into a detachment of local partisans and became their faithful assistant.

After one of the sabotages committed by Kolya together with two comrades (teenagers blew up a German warehouse), he and two other boys were captured by the Nazis. One of the guys was killed, the second managed to escape. Kolya was left alone in the cell.

Sophisticated "jokes" of the fascists

During endless interrogations, the 13-year-old child never confirmed to the Nazis that he worked for the partisans. They beat him until he lost consciousness, pinched his fingers with doors, threatened him, and, on the contrary, fed him with promises to let him go if he admitted where the partisan detachment was located. But the teenager was heroically silent.

And then one day, already desperate to get information from the boy, exhausted to a pulp, the Nazis announced to him that he was sentenced to death.

- I walked barefoot, on my chest dangled plywood with crooked large letters: "I am a partisan." Behind, with a small interval, under the escort of gendarmes, policemen and sheepdogs, three walked - each had a plate on his chest like mine,”Nikolai Pechenenko recalled later.

The Nazis drove the entire village to execution. Some women lamented: "Why a child, then?", While others just stood in mute grief. The condemned were placed on stools by the gallows. In front of Kolya's eyes, three adult partisans were executed one after another. It was his turn, they put a noose around his neck and he felt a heat all over his body. At that moment Kolya lost consciousness, and woke up in a cold cell …

As the partisan later recalled, the Nazis imitated his death three times: they sentenced him to be hanged and canceled their decision at the last moment. Everyone hoped that the child would break down and falter. After the last such failed execution, Kolya was paralyzed.

The partisans still managed to get the boy out of the clutches of the Nazis and transport him to their camp. After a while, he began to recover, and during one of the attacks of the fascists, when his comrades fiercely fought back, as a result of stress, the ability to move suddenly returned to him. And he continued to fight.

From August 1944 to June 1945, the teenager served as a pupil in the 155th Army Artillery Brigade. He participated in the battles on the Dnieper, drove the Nazis across Western Europe, and on May 9 he met in Austria.

Your personal feat in peacetime

After the war, Nikolai married, became the father of sons and a daughter, who gave him a grandson. And in 1970, at the age of 40, he was suddenly paralyzed again. This time, forever. The doctors suggested that the terrible stress suffered during the last canceled execution affected.

His two youngest sons had to be sent to a boarding school, and the eldest, sixth grader, stayed with his parents and helped his father in everything.

The factory workers made a special chair for the almost completely immobilized Nikolai and put a desk in which a remote control with switches was mounted.

According to the memoirs of contemporaries, the paralyzed front-line soldier wrote his memoirs with a ballpoint pen, holding it with his teeth. He expounded his most vivid memories in 600 school notebooks. Later, from these records, the autobiographical story "Scorched Fate" was formed. It was published as a separate book in Kiev in 1984. And three years later, Nikolai Pechenenko was gone.