Tag #135275 - Interview #77995 (Liana Degtiar)

In June the war began. There were bombings of Kishinev. A bomb killed my parent's friend Marelskiy in the central square at 6am. I think my parents and I evacuated in early July. Nobody expected this war to last long. My grandparents stayed home: they were too old to travel. We took a folder with documents, silver spoons, forks, my grandmother's gold rings, necklace and a chain and locket. We also had a few suitcases with winter clothes. We had to cross the Dnestr on a boat. My father also helped other people to sail to the opposite bank. At this moment an air raid began. Germans were shooting their machine guns. It was a squall of lead. There were many victims, but my father continued helping people to cross the river. He finally picked us to take us to the other side, but we had to leave some of our luggage behind. We couldn't take the luggage while so many people were still waiting to cross the river. I think after we crossed the river, the crossing was closed. We moved to the railroad station in Vapnyarka [today Ukraine]. We walked across the fields, I also had to carry some luggage, and I kept moaning, but I didn't drop it. We seemed to be walking endlessly before we took a train to Vinnitsa.

In Vinnitsa we boarded a train heading east. I don't remember anything about this trip. We arrived at Shakhty in Rostov region [today Russia]. My father went to work as a teacher in a Mining College as he knew Russian well. He and his students descended into a shaft to study electrical equipment. It was time for me to go to school. I had my birth certificate issued in Romanian. Who would have known Romanian in Shakhty? My name was also indicated in my father's Soviet passport. Right before 1st September my father was mobilized to the army. My mother and I went to the recruitment office with my father, when it occurred to me that I had no documents whatsoever mentioning my name or any information about me. We went to the military commandant to convey this problem to him and request for some kind of a certificate with my name included in it. He looked at my father's passport and said, 'Ah, you are a Bessarabian. We don't recruit Bessarabians' [Soviet power didn't trust the former Romanian citizens]. He sent my father home.