The autobiographic narratives of embattled Stalingrad, written by elderly child-survivors, transform the city from the site of an unprecedented military operation into one of unspeakable childhood trauma. In my essay, I claim that, narratively, this trauma mainly reveals itself through the accounts of the “damaged world”– destruction of the city and bodily trauma, although their authors rarely speak about their minds as damaged. Though delayed by at least 50 years, and thus impoverished, children’s voices in the narratives acquire meaningful expression through their older selves thanks to the embodiment of memory. They reconstruct the “lived” urban space through the changes in “tactile apprehension”, “kinesthetic appropriation”, and the overall multi-sensory experience of the city shaken by explosions, burning and rapidly turning into ruins. The narratives shape a complex collective perspective of a child-target – bombed, surrounded by explosions, and aimed at by activating multiple sensory channels – visual, auditory, tactile, kinesthetic, etc., which makes “the pain of others”, to use Susan Sontag’s expression, very tangible. I thus view autobiographic testimonies as a specific genre, which allows for the transformation of children from objects of imagery into its creators, living carriers and transmitters. My goal is to demonstrate that whether on the run or hiding below ground, this child nevertheless continues to be a powerful observer and a chronicler, and not just an innocent and damaged victim, which gives her the narrative power to shape space and, hence, history through her own perspective. 