Mikhail Gorodetsky was born in Kiev in 1923. He was one of many siblings, and his parents died when he was young. Mikhail was brought up in the household of his uncle. At the age of thirteen, he was apprenticed to a lathe operator at a factory, and later attended a school for the working youth. He eventually obtained a driver's license.
In late June 1941, when the Soviet-German War broke out, Mikhail, who was not yet eighteen, volunteered for frontline service, lying about his true age. He went on to fight in the territory of Ukraine, and was severely wounded. He was miraculously saved, and spent a long time convalescing at a hospital in Chkalov (present-day Orenburg). The damage to his health was so extensive that he was reassigned to non-combat duty. However, Mikhail had nowhere to return to. Kiev, where his family had been left, was occupied by the Germans. And so, he showed up at the recruitment office once again, expressing his desire to return to the front.
In September 1942, Gorodetsky was assigned to a mechanized battalion that was deployed in Voronezh Oblast. His job was transporting ammunition, often under enemy fire. In some cases, he had to defend himself with his gun, without getting out of the vehicle. After seeing action near Voronezh, Gorodetsky went on to fight in the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk. Apart from ammunition, he was sometimes required to ferry the bodies of dead soldiers from the battlefield, and retrieve German weapons and uniforms (that latter were much superior in quality to their Soviet counterparts). He occasionally had to participate in attacks. In 1943, Gorodetsky was seriously wounded for the second time, in the fighting on the Dnieper River. Because of the lack of qualified surgeons in the hospital, the shell fragment lodged in his abdomen could not be removed. At the time, military drivers, too, were in short supply, and so Mikhail returned to frontline duty, with the fragment still inside him.
After entering Poland, Mikhail took part in the liberation of the Majdanek concentration camp. He would later recall the experience:
"I witnessed some terrible things in this camp! There were a great many children behind the barbed wire. Further on, behind the wire, there was a row of barracks. Their doors were sealed – the people had been herded inside, and they could not get out. Then, I saw the barrels filled with human ashes, which the Germans had used to fertilize their fields. These barrels also contained bones and skull fragments, and lots of other things besides. And I shudder to think about the number of baby strollers standing nearby! The crematorium had one room where the bodies of the murdered lay; another room where their teeth and jaws were pulled out; a third room where they were undressed, and a fourth room where they were cremated. I decided not to enter the cremation room, being unable to bear this ultimate horror. My relatives, too, may have been among those victims. I felt so dejected… I was constantly on edge, and could not drive on."
Later, Gorodetsky took part in the crossing of the Oder River, the battles for Posen (present-day Poznań), and the Battle of Berlin, where he got as far as the Brandenburg Gate. He wrote on the wall of the Reichstag: "I am from Kiev."
In the course of the war, Mikhail was awarded the Order of the Red Star, as well as some medals.
After the end of the war, the brigade in which Gorodetsky served was tasked with widening the German railway tracks, to enable the passage of Soviet trains. Afterward, his unit was transferred to the Soviet Far East, where Mikhail was quickly discharged for health reasons. He returned to Kiev. All of his relatives had been murdered in Babi Yar, except for three brothers who had been killed in action.
In the postwar years, Mikhail Gorodetsky found a job as a driver, and he worked at it until his retirement.
Related Resources
Mikhail Gorodetsky's testimony about the anti-Jewish mood among the Soviet populace in 1941:
"During our retreat, we were approached by local villagers. Once, they surrounded me and said: "Say 'corn'! Say 'millet'!" [to expose his Jewish accent]. Then, they said: "When you get to the village, we will hang you on a telegraph pole." My commanding captain then said:
– What's the matter? Why do they keep pestering you?
– I am a Jew.
– What does that mean?
He came from some remote region of northern Russia, and did not even know what a 'Jew' was. When we retreated, we had already been informed that, in Babi Yar, the Germans had exterminated 33,000 people in two days [In reality, the Soviet newspapers reported in November 1941 that 52,000 Jews had been murdered in Babi Yar; the figure of 33,700 Jewish victims comes from an Einsatzgruppen report, which would not be published until after the war]. I kept asking myself: 'What kind of weapons did they use to kill so many people in two days?' It was unimaginable to me."
Mikhail Gorodetsky on antisemitism in the ranks of the Red Army:
"They kept referring to me with ethnic slurs. As we were crossing the Oder, one of them told the battalion commander: "Comrade Commander, tell this Jewboy to go first!" I always passed over it in silence. I could have killed any of them in a minute, but then I would have been killed in turn."
