Tag #130647 - Interview #87383 (Carol Margulies)

The peasants there had absolutely nothing at all; they were as poor as church mice. All they got for working in a kolkhoz [15] was some wheat. This is all they ate. In order to get a shirt, they traded potatoes or any other food they had. The peasant in whose house we stayed didn’t have relatives. Her son-in-law had probably run away or had been seized, as the Ukrainians were very nasty. When the war began, they didn’t fire one single bullet at the Germans, because Hitler had promised that Ukraine would be an independent country. So they waited for the Germans.

When they finally arrived and started to send them to forced labor in Germany, their enthusiasm was over. They changed their mind, became partisans and started to fight against the Germans.