VE-Day is just around the corner, and I have just finished a related translation project I mostly did for myself, however I still think you guys might find it interesting. It's memoirs by Nikolai Nikulin, a person who had been through literal hell, through places that were horrible even by WW2 Eastern Front standards.
It's not really that unique since "a young boy straight out of school goes to war" scenario was quite common back then, of course, but Volkhov/Leningrad Front are criminally underrepresented, in my opinion, plus this book has of course never been published in anything besides Russian.
Also feel free to discuss any other memoirs you personally enjoy, WW2 or not.
http://docdro.id/4j2AWEO
>During the spring of 1941 many people in Leningrad felt the coming of the war. Informed people knew about preparations for it, common folks were made uneasy by hearsay and gossip. However, nobody could assume that already after three months of invasion Germans would have appeared at the city gates, and after half a year every third resident would have died a terrible death from malnutrition. Let alone we, spring chickens straight out from the school walls, didn't think of what was to come. Yet the majority was destined to die among the swamps surrounding Leningrad in the nearest time. Others, those few who would have returned, were awaited another fate – remaining crippled, legless, armless; or turning into neurotics, alcoholics, having lost the peace of mind forever.
Woah, cool. Why did you take on this project?
>>1096374
Just boredom, really. One weekend in February was especially dull and I figured I might as well do something productive.
>>1096394
>I'm so bored I'll translate a Russian war memoir
well I can't fault you for that!
>>1096411
What can I say, I enjoy some challenge. It's definitely not something I'd ever attempt again, though. Since the guy's manuscript was not actually intended for publication, the writing style is a real mess, tense sequencing alone was annoying enough.
I made this list of Hiroshima & Nagasaki memoirs a few years ago. I'm sure there's more I could add to it now that it's easier to search for books but that'll be for another day...
Nagasaki 1945: The First Full-Length Eyewitness Account of the Atomic Bomb Attack on Nagasaki by Tatsuichiro Akizuki
Bells of Nagasaki by Takashi Nagai
First Into Nagasaki: The Censored Eyewitness Dispatches on Post-Atomic Japan and Its Prisoners of War by George Weller
Letters from the End of the World: A Firsthand Account of the Bombing of Hiroshima by Toyofumi Ogura
Hiroshima Diary: The Journal of a Japanese Physician, August 6-September 30, 1945 by Michihiko Hachiya
One Sunny Day: A Child's Memories of Hiroshima by Hideko Snider
My Hiroshima by Junko Morimoto
Hiroshima: Three Witnesses by Richard H. Miniear
We Dropped the A-Bomb by Abe Spitzer
Were We the Enemy? American Survivors of Hiroshima by Rinjiro Sodei and John Junkerman
The 509th Remembered: A History of the 509th Composite Group as Told by the Veterens Themselves
Seven Hours to Zero by Joseph Laurence Marx
Japan 1945: A U.S. Marine's Photographs from Ground Zero by Joe O'Donnell
It stresses me out to know that there are so many memoirs and letters and journals written by people who experienced WWII that will never be published at all, much less published in English.
a bump for OP
how interesting, thanks op! Anyone know any good french memoirs?
OP here, nice to see the thread is still alive. I'll post a couple of parts in the book I personally liked.
My dreams were continuing, and, as it often
happens, I felt myself both a participator and a spectator.
I dreamed that I didn't lie in the bushes at all, but on the
edge of a hole, on shelter-half, and that I was the one
killed. Gruff voice sounded above me, it was calling me
Petr Ignatyevich Tarasov for some reason, it told that I
faithfully did my duty and met my death befitting for a
Russian man. Then people kissed me on the black
forehead, covered the face with a rag and lowered me
into the hole. Salvo rumbled three times, as if a large
piece of tarpaulin had been torn, and everything was
over.
I lied, experiencing neither fear nor self-pity – it
was more like calm. And then I understood that I had
been long since prepared for an end like that, that I had
been long since living convinced of its coming. I
understood that fear that pressed me into the ground,
forced me to scratch it with my nails and whisper
improvised prayers, was from an animal, but with my
human soul, perhaps unwittingly, I had already been on
the other side of the line. I understood that my small and
weak soul had long since died, remaining with those who
would not come back.
I understood that even if I had been to survive the
war, nothing would have changed for me. The chasm
between me and the run of events would always be there,
everything would lose sense being crushed by a heavy
weight of the past. I understood, finally, that my place
was there, in that hole, near the similar holes in which
ones similar to me lied. Having understood that, I sank
into a calm, serene oblivion that had only been
interrupted by me waking up in the morning…
/pol/ would love this one.
One night we were suddenly woken up. Half-asleep,
spurred by command, having grabbed SMGs and
grenades, we climbed the tank. And only as it started
forward like wind, we had woken up properly. As we were
told later, a scouting squad found a German
concentration camp where several hundreds of still
surviving Jews had been held in deep German rear area, forty kilometers from us. Judging by the shooting that
could be heard from there, prisoner extermination was
going on. Scouts reported the camp coordinates over the
radio and command deployed us – two tanks with
soldiers on the armor – to save the dying people.
Since offensive was going on and firm German
defense did not exist, tanks jumped over like wind and
soon we had reached the destination, being mudded by
dirty snow from under the tracks. Tankers shot German
firing points with cannons and machine guns, then one
tank smashed the gate on the move, and we entered the
camp grounds. After a short, exceedingly hard-fought
shootout we sent SS guards to hell.
I misremember the following events since I got
stunned by a grenade that hefty fritz had lobbed at me. It
cut my short fur jacket all over and wounded me a little.
And still the images of an area in front of bunkhouses
scattered with corpses of shot Jews were preserved in my
memory, and we found several hundreds of survivors in
the bunkhouses. Skin-covered skeletons were sitting
there. They looked at me with their huge dark eyes that
had not even fear but terror, desperation and death in
them. I could have never forgotten that gaze for all my life.
