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There were tenants in all apartments in our house. Jews were away: some didn’t return from the ghetto. There were only Russian neighbors living in their apartments. A postman and his invalid mother lived in our apartment. I asked our Russian neighbor Valia to let me stay overnight in her apartment. Valia was one year younger than I. When the war began she placed a big cross on her door for Germans to know that there were Russians living in this apartment. Few days later I went to my college and they gave a bed in the hostel. When my parents and my brother returned, I lived in the hostel and they stayed with our relatives or acquaintances. Actually, it seemed nobody expected to have us back in our town. Our belongings were stolen after we evacuated. Only in 1948 we managed to get our apartment back through a court.
Period
Interview
Bertha Isayeva