Tag #129306 - Interview #78037 (Lilya Finberg)

In September we reached Udmurtiya, west of the Urals. Our family was split up. My mother and uncle were sent to one section, I was sent to another section, which was 18 kilometers away. From the time I was 15, until my mother's death after the war, I never had a chance to live with her again. We were settled in barracks that had rooms for men and women, about 10 persons in each. I worked in the office, while Soviet prisoners and German prisoners of war worked in peat production. This was the first time I saw them; I remember they would fall down, dead, in 40-degree frost, wearing hardly any clothes. At night they were taken outside the village and thrown into a special pit for the dead. They all were not older than 25. We had no particular hatred toward them then.

In the office I worked with papers, wearing special winter boots and a padded jacket; ink would freeze in the ink pot. I worked for 10 hours a day. It was a little warmer in the dorms. I remember nothing but work there. I remember getting sick with jaundice. I also remember planting potatoes and turnips to eat. Our salaries were tiny, not enough to buy food. On the only day off - Sunday - I went to see my mother, walking 18 kilometers through wild woods.

There were practically no military personnel in our territory - only camp guards and guards for the German prisoners. Somebody would always escape from the camp and get caught. I remember practically nobody from the local population. I only remember that people who were evacuated lived there.

We knew little about the course of the war, and had no idea what the Germans did to the Jews. We did not get a single letter from my father from the front. We learned about his death, somewhere in Austria, only after the war.