Tag #117543 - Interview #100491 (Frida Zimanene)

The wife of the first secretary of the central Komsomol committee of Lithuania was with us. Unfortunately, I don’t remember her name. She managed to get an appointment with the authorities. This lady, who had been imprisoned in bourgeois Lithuania for her Communist beliefs, convinced the authorities that we were not spies and we were released. She also managed to make arrangements for our bus to be returned to us as it had already been requisitioned. Minsk was bombed. There were corpses lying outside. It was impossible to get on the train. We took the bus and headed on. We often stopped in the villages, stayed in the houses. Simple Belarusian peasants were kind and hospitable. They had us sit down at the table and share the potluck with them. Most of them were very poor. They didn’t have anything but potatoes, young onion and milk. At any rate, we had a place to stay and something to eat. In Russia we got off the bus and took a train, crammed with fugitives. It took us a week to get to the town of Penza [about 600 km from Moscow]. There we went to the evacuation point, wherefrom we were sent to the small town of Nikolo-Pestrovka, not far from Penza.