I was born in Kyiv in 1928. My fullname was Lev Borisovich Pinzoveckij. I studied at school #18. My father, Boris Samojlovich Pinzoveckij, worked as a head of department in the post office; mother, Genja Samojlovna Libova , kept the house and looked after nine children. We were not rich, but we were satisfied and clothed. That was our address: Podol, the Nizhnij Val street, 23.
When the war began, my father and elder brother were taken to the army. My father died at the front, and my brother is alive, now he lives in Sibir’. Mother with eight children stayed in Kyiv, where the Germans entered on the 19th of September . On the 29th of September, our family together with all the Jews of Podol went to Lukjanovka . Mom was carrying in her arms baby son David. Mother was followed by seven more children : girls Raja and Sarah, the other were boys. Near the Jewish cemetery we got into the cordon. Here the Germans ordered to put things into piles and ordered to undress. Mom pushed me and my ten years old brother Fima in the dense bush and told us to hide there.
We lay in the bushes and heard the shots. It was too terrible. The Germans passed by us, but, fortunately, they dad not see us. So we stayed in the bushes until morning. When local children began to collect the Jews things , which the Germans did not take, we got out of the bushes and joined them.
Then we went home. Our neighbor Strochkina Olga told us that the Nazis killed all the Jews, who did not come to Babyn Yar. Even the old women were driven by Nazis to the garden and were killed there. Then the Nazis buried them near our house. My brother and I lay all night in the attic, and Olja gave us bread. Now Olga Strochkina lives in the Western Ukraine.
My brother and I went to Darnitsa, then to Brovary, wandered from village to village and we were begging with an outstretched hand. I called myself Kostja, my brother called himself Grisha. In one of the villages I lost my brother and do not know anything about his fate even today. I left alone. I got on foot from Boryspil to Belgorod, where I crossed the front line.
Horror of Babyn Yar lived in my memory and I was called Russian, and my parents were killed during the bombing. I became Kostja Belous. They believed me and sent me to the Voronezh region , to the village Podosinovka, where I tended the collective farm horses. I was staying there for two years, and in 1943 I entered a vocational school in Pervoural’sk, worked in the forge of a military factory. I was a good Stakhanovite and got a good ration - 800 grams of bread . Although I was only 16 years old, I was respected on the manufactory. The war finished , and I was drawn to my homeland. I left the factory and got to Kyiv on the roofs of the trains. Kindered thought I was dead.
In Kyiv , in 1945 was bout of anti-Semitism, and when I wanted to return to my name, my uncle, father’s brother, discouraged me. So I stayed Belous Konstantin Petrovich. I wandered in Kyiv in a seeking of property: in our apartment on Nizhnij Val , lived other people, and neighbors pilfered our things. So I had to go to my grandmother, who lived in Malin. I worked at the paper factory. Then I was taken into the army. I served in the construction battalion of railway. I got specialty shovel operator. Then I met my elder brother, whose fate was not lighter than mine. He was in a cordon and saved miraculously. Now he goes under his name, but spelled Ukrainian. He has three children, they do not know that their father is a Jew. Only two of us left from a large family.