In Moskovsky Komsomolets , Irina Bobrova

Twice not shot

“We’re going to kill every tenth person,” the terrorists told the woman.  Sixty years earlier, the fascists had released her on the count of ten.

It has been a little more than a month since the seizure of hostages in the theatrical center at Dubrovka.  On November 7th the authorities reported the precise number of dead hostages: 128.  This week another woman passed away, and seven are still in critical condition.  Forty-eight have had to be hospitalized once again.

Lilia Lokshina was in intensive care at the war veteran’s hospital exactly one month, and last week she was moved to the cardiology department.  She does not know what went on during the assault on the theatrical center, how many people died, or how long she was unconscious.  Lilia Mihailovna’s husband is trying not to tell her anything.

Lilia Lokshina believes that she was born under a lucky star.  She has twice been a hostage – the other time was in the summer of 1943.  Each time she succeeded in escaping from death.

Lilia and her mother Galina Antonovna lived in Minsk a long time ago.  ‘Galya’ was 20 when she gave birth to her daughter.  Half a year later the war started, and her husband went to the front, while Galya began working with the partisans.

“There were a lot of informants in the city, and somebody found out that my brother was the commander of a partisan company,” recounts Galina Antonovna.  “They searched the house and sent us to the prison where all suspects were taken.  Lilia was only three at the time.

“We were held hostage for almost four days,” continues Galina Antonovna.  “There were about seventy people in the cell.  Each night the fascists opened the door and singled out nine for death, and released the tenth one.  We already knew that they took those nine in a truck out into the woods, where they had already dug some graves.  Along the way they released gas into the back of the truck, and the people died in terrible agony.  So whenever the condemned were taken from the cell, there was so much crying and yelling and moaning.  My daughter was in my arms the whole time and asking me: Mamochka, why are they going to kill us?”

They ended up lucky number ten, since Galina and her daughter counted as one person.  In Minsk that year more than 5,000 were shot.

On a Saturday evening almost 60 years later, Muscovite Lilia Mihailovna, now a teacher at Moscow University’s boarding school for gifted children, headed for the theater with her girlfriend Galina.

“We had the very best seats: the ninth row in the main seating,” recounts Lilia Mihailovna.  “At the beginning of the second act a bomb showed up near our ‘prestigious’ seats, in the 11th row, in the exact center of the auditorium.

“At first we didn’t know what had happened, and for another few hours we still could not believe what was going on.  After all, we had no one to talk to, there no one was in the ninth row except for us,” continues the former hostage.  “In front of us sat a Chechen woman in black, and behind us was the bomb.  I didn’t even see them bring it in and set it up.  I had the feeling that it had been there even before the seizure of the building.

“On the second day a man in a camouflage uniform showed up and declared that if the Russian authorities did not carry out their demands, they would start shooting every tenth person.”

And Lilia Mikhailovna remembered Minsk in 1943.  The pictures, long forgotten by her childhood memory, flashed before her eyes: cell #86 on the third floor of that Belarusian prison where she spent four days with her mother.

“I sat there and remembered what I thought I’d forgotten forever,” says Lilia Mikhailovna.  “In front of me I saw the faces of the Nazis, familiar to the tiniest little line, the details of their uniforms, and I heard with some inner hearing those sharp voices speaking in a harsh, foreign language.  I was frightened.  After all, they say that when a person is dying their life flashes before their eyes.  So, in order to distract myself, I tried to speak with the female kamikaze.”

Back then, in Minsk, did anyone try to speak with the fascists?

“Well now, of course not.  But all the Chechen women looked so young, though ‘our’ Chechen was a bit older.  Apparently she was the head of them all,” continues Lokshina.  “I tried to talk with her, but she was so tired, and falling asleep all the time.  She held a pistol in her left hand.  The gun rocked from side to side, and fell from her hand a few times.  I wanted to tell her to let me hold it while she took a nap.  There were none of the male gunmen around.  They were all sitting at the end of the auditorium.  Once the Chechen woman whispered to us: ‘Do you think we want your deaths?  Don’t worry, we won’t kill you.’  They didn’t want to blow up the building.  That’s for sure!  It seemed to me that they were waiting for someone the whole time.  Only who?”

After awhile they started to release the children, and a few of the women.

“One Frenchwoman took her child as well as someone else’s, and whispered to that girl’s mother that she could find her daughter later,” recalls Lilia Mihailovna.  “I remember another little girl.  She was so clever and happy.  When they began to lead out the children, she latched onto her mama and didn’t want to let go.  They stayed there until the end.  I don’t know if they survived or not.”

On the second day Lilia Mihailovna accidentally slipped in the orchestra pit where the terrorists had set up a latrine.  A blood vessel broke in the woman’s leg, and she bandaged her leg with some kind of a rag, but it was unendurable to sit in a chair.  They permitted the woman to lie under her chair, and from that moment on she lost track of time.

“I didn’t know whether it was night or day.  I can’t believe that we sat there for three days.  It seemed to me that it all only lasted for a few hours,” she recalls.  “It’s so strange.  After all, a long time ago, back in Minsk, my mother had the very same feeling.  It also seemed to her that we were in prison for only a day, and I was too small to understand.”

During the whole time she was there, Lilia Mihailovna only ate three pieces of ‘Inspiration’ chocolate, and took a few swallows of water.  The chocolate and water were given the hostages by the terrorists.

“Back then in Minsk they also fed us,” remembers Lilia Mihailovna.  “Once a day they gave us some kind of soup.  Mama, I remember, didn’t eat her portion, but stuffed it into me.  But I only wanted to eat on the first day, just like during this recent capture.  I was squeamish about the going to the bathroom.  People climbed down into the orchestra pit and covered their faces with their hands.  They found it uncomfortable, shameful.  The hostages up on the balcony were taken to the regular bathroom, though the flush wasn’t working.  Later the gunmen selected a woman from the audience and made her the cleaning woman.  After every person she washed the toilets.”

Did you suspect that there would be an assault?

“Why it does not surprise me I don’t know, but information percolated through from somewhere.  When we were standing in line for the orchestra pit, people started to pass down the line a rumor that at any moment the assault would begin, and they would release gas.  When I returned to my spot I suggested to Galya that she not drink any more water, but use it to wet the hem of her skirt so that she would have a moist rag to hold to her face.”

Both women awoke in the hospital.

“Apparently, when the rescuers carried out the people, I was taken for dead.  They had walked all over me.  My lips, forearm, legs, my whole body was all covered in bruises, and these still haven’t gone away.  They carried me out of the DK last.  The probably saved first those who were sitting and conscious.”

Lilia Lokshina was put into intensive care at the war veteran’s hospital, only a hop, skip, and a jump from the DK building.  She was unconscious for two weeks, and has been on a respirator for an entire month.

“More than forty hostages passed through our hospital’s intensive care department,” recounts department head Lyudmila Sergeevna.  “Practically all had the same diagnosis: acute poisoning.  The reason for their illness was not just the gas.  The fasting had its effect, as did the absence of water, long-term immobility, and, of course, stress.  None of our patients needed to be re-admitted to the hospital.  In most of the hospitals people did not allow themselves to finish their treatments, and asked to be released early.  Many even went to work the next day.  But obviously, after such a stress, a long period of recovery is necessary.”

By the Proletarskaya subway station, not far from the theatrical center, is a poster advertising the show:  “Every evening a full-sized bomber will land on the stage.  Nord-Ost.  A classical musical.”

The clock over the poster is broken.  By coincidence, its hands have stopped at the time when the assault began.