Tag #131851 - Interview #92978 (Izia Antipka)

Our life was very hard, the bread that we received by cards [24] was too little. Mama sewed a lot and her clients paid her with food for her work. One woman was a shop assistant selling bread and she brought us a loaf of this sticky bread, which looked like soap. I had to help the family and became an apprentice of a blacksmith: he gave me food for my work. Later my father and Marcello – he and Feiga also lived in Uzbekistan – were mobilized to the labor army [mobilized to do physical work for the army], my father earned well and supported us. My father and Marcello worked near Moscow. Their Uzbek comrades didn’t want to work and starved themselves to exhaustion to be sent back home. My father and Marcello were to escort them. So he managed to visit us a few times, bringing flour, sugar, tinned meat or even sausage.