Tag #125053 - Interview #78040 (Vladimir Tarskiy)

On Sunday 22nd June 1941 only my mother and I were at home, when the radio broadcast with a tragic voice of the announcer: ‘Listen to an important news’. Then Molotov [17] spoke. As it happened, the war had begun and bombs were falling. I was 16 and had a passport when the war began. Fire protection groups were formed. In the first month of the war we patrolled the roofs in Moscow installing barrels with water, bags of sand and big long tongs to fight the fire bombs. There was an air raid on 22nd July 1941. The Germans made a tactical mistake. There were markets under glass roofs near railway stations in Moscow and the railway stations were camouflaged. So they dropped bombs on those glass roofs, but the stations were intact.

We saw German planes targeted by our ground artillery and were happy when their planes were hit. Later there were bombings every day. Fire bombs broke through the roofs and stuck in the attics. We grabbed them with tongs and threw them into barrels with water. We saw big fires. Soon a direction for the evacuation of the children from Moscow was issued. My sisters Victoria and Inga, my cousin Marianna, my mother and I and my aunts Sophia and Rachil evacuated to the town of Naberezhniye Chelny [about 900 km east of Moscow]. There was a big grain elevator in the town, and my stepfather had acquaintances who worked there. He made arrangements for the children to stay in the kindergarten and the adults to be accommodated in local houses.