Tag #123063 - Interview #99947 (Samuel Birger)

All fugitives, who got off the train, took trucks. We were taken to village Zavolgiye . All evacuees were housed in barracks and offered jobs. There was a large brick plant in nearby village. Mother and aunt Vera went to work at the plant. Aunt Vera molded bricks- shoveled heavy clay paste in the mould. When the clay got hard, it was fired in the furnace. My mother stood behind the furnace and put the bricks on special trays on trolleys. It was a hard work. Neither mother nor Vera was involved in hard physical labor before war. Brother and I remained in the barrack. At nights, when mother and auntie worked in night shifts, I was scared off by huge rats running in the field and tired people, who had been clattering with big sticks on the floor. In the afternoon I walked around the village and asked for food. In general Tartars had an attitude towards Jews, but they were sorry for children. I, being incapable of studying in my native town, rather quickly learnt how to ask for certain things in Russian and Tartar. I had a flaxen sack, in which I brought my catch- chumps of bread, spuds, sometimes apple and. Mother and aunt received food cards [11]. Just 200 grams of halfdone rye bread was given for children and grandmother, so we were constantly being starving. In late 1941 grandmother Haya died by hunger. Her health was also ruined by maladies and yearn for grandfather. As usual on that day I walked around the village and when I came back in the barrack Haya’s body was cold. Having never seen cadavers, I felt no fear or pity. By that time all my senses had become numb due to constant famish. Mother and aunt Vera buried grandmother themselves and read kaddish over her body. They dug a grave outside the village and brought grandmother’s body covered in a sheet, buried her and put a heavy stone on her grave. They tried their best. Tartars, who were Muslims, refused from burying a Jew. Mother used to pray a lot here in those hard conditions. There was no way we could think of traditions as the most important was to survive. Sometimes Jewish women got together and prayed for their loved ones and children.