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On 22 June 1941 the Great Patriotic War began. I don’t exactly remember this day, but I remember the bombing. The fascist planes were flying low over our houses – this was so frightful. My father was called up to the army practically on the first day of the war. My mother and I saw him off to the recruitment office. Uncle Moishe, Vera’s husband, was there, too. They both were sent to the military units that were to defend Kiev. My father was killed during Kiev defensive operations on 12 September 1941. We heard about it after we returned from the evacuation.
We went to evacuation in July. My father insisted that we go. He must have known already that the Germans were exterminating Jews on the occupied areas. My father and Uncle Moishe put us on the train. My mother, my brother Misha and my mother’s sister Vera and I were all together on this trip.
I remember a terrible bombing on our way. The train stopped suddenly. The bombers attacked. And Misenka and I were so scared that we ran to the fields and got lost. It took my mother a while to find us. I remember seeing dead people for the first time – they were killed during the bombing. They looked weird, with their bodies lying artificially like dolls. We arrived in Lugansk first in the Eastern Ukraine. We lived there for a month or two. We rented an apartment in a private house. All of a sudden Aunt Vera decided to go back to Kiev and made us go to the railway station. They told us at the railway station that we couldn’t go to Kiev because the Germans were near Kiev and that trains didn’t go in that direction. We got on the train and went further east in evacuation. I remember very little about our trip. I remember feeling hungry all the time. My mother got off at the stops to exchange clothes for food for Mishenka and me. I was older than Misha and I didn’t show that I was hungry, but Mishenka cried all the time. We arrived in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. My mother rented a room from the Uzbeks and went to work in the rice factory. Aunt Vera stayed home. She arranged a small vegetable garden near our house. There was very little food and there was this constant feeling of being hungry. I remember getting into the neighbor’s garden to pick some plums. Their dog attacked me and I’ve been afraid of dogs ever since. My little brother Mishenka died from hunger in 1942. I remember my mother crying and saying words of the Jewish prayers for the deceased. I didn’t understand them. Our life was very hard.
We didn’t receive letters from my father and Uncle Moishe and my mother understood that they were probably not alive. She didn’t say this to me; she tried to cheer me up. In the evenings she made plans for our happy life in the future, when the war was over and we would be back at home. The Uzbek family that gave us shelter was nice to us but they couldn’t be much support because they were starving, too. Later my mother learned to make some kind of toffees from flour and sugar. She went out to sell them. But unauthorized trade or commerce was not allowed in the country. The people that violated this order were called speculators (or profiteers). Once my mother was detained and taken to the militia (police) department. Later she sold fish that our Uzbek landlord was catching. Basically, my mother took each and every effort to support me. She was constantly worried about how she was going to tell her husband about Mishenka and that she had lost him.
We went to evacuation in July. My father insisted that we go. He must have known already that the Germans were exterminating Jews on the occupied areas. My father and Uncle Moishe put us on the train. My mother, my brother Misha and my mother’s sister Vera and I were all together on this trip.
I remember a terrible bombing on our way. The train stopped suddenly. The bombers attacked. And Misenka and I were so scared that we ran to the fields and got lost. It took my mother a while to find us. I remember seeing dead people for the first time – they were killed during the bombing. They looked weird, with their bodies lying artificially like dolls. We arrived in Lugansk first in the Eastern Ukraine. We lived there for a month or two. We rented an apartment in a private house. All of a sudden Aunt Vera decided to go back to Kiev and made us go to the railway station. They told us at the railway station that we couldn’t go to Kiev because the Germans were near Kiev and that trains didn’t go in that direction. We got on the train and went further east in evacuation. I remember very little about our trip. I remember feeling hungry all the time. My mother got off at the stops to exchange clothes for food for Mishenka and me. I was older than Misha and I didn’t show that I was hungry, but Mishenka cried all the time. We arrived in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. My mother rented a room from the Uzbeks and went to work in the rice factory. Aunt Vera stayed home. She arranged a small vegetable garden near our house. There was very little food and there was this constant feeling of being hungry. I remember getting into the neighbor’s garden to pick some plums. Their dog attacked me and I’ve been afraid of dogs ever since. My little brother Mishenka died from hunger in 1942. I remember my mother crying and saying words of the Jewish prayers for the deceased. I didn’t understand them. Our life was very hard.
We didn’t receive letters from my father and Uncle Moishe and my mother understood that they were probably not alive. She didn’t say this to me; she tried to cheer me up. In the evenings she made plans for our happy life in the future, when the war was over and we would be back at home. The Uzbek family that gave us shelter was nice to us but they couldn’t be much support because they were starving, too. Later my mother learned to make some kind of toffees from flour and sugar. She went out to sell them. But unauthorized trade or commerce was not allowed in the country. The people that violated this order were called speculators (or profiteers). Once my mother was detained and taken to the militia (police) department. Later she sold fish that our Uzbek landlord was catching. Basically, my mother took each and every effort to support me. She was constantly worried about how she was going to tell her husband about Mishenka and that she had lost him.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Raissa Yasvoina