Tag #116083 - Interview #91352 (Chasia Spanerflig)

In early spring 1944 thirteen guys came to the squad. They were students of the Leningrad Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. They had been captured and taken to Germany as POWs. On the way via Lithuanian territory the guys managed to escape. They were lucky to meet good people who told them how to get to our squad. I was sympathetic with them – hungry and gaunt – resembling me, when I had first come to the forest. In the evening, when we were sitting by the fire, the guys told us about themselves. One of them, tall and stately, looked at me and said, ‘That lady will be my wife!’ His name was Mikhail Spanerflig, he was two or three years older than me. He was from Vinnitsa [today Ukraine]. We were making jests, remembering prewar life, singing Soviet songs, which I knew by heart, as I could hardly speak Russian. Within a couple of months I started speaking pretty good Russian. The next day the guys were sent to another squad, where a group of shot-firers was formed.