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My 2nd memory is of the wartime. I am a small 3-year-old girl, and I’m taken to the kindergarten. And then we are caught on the corner of the street by the sound of the banshee. Its strident sound was so traumatic that I still cannot bear even the honking of the passing cars. And my third memory is of the bombing when we were on a barge evacuating from Kiev in July 1941. I saw the boat sailing ahead of us bombed and drowned. The sight of it followed me for a long time.
My father was mobilized to the army from the first days of the war. He came to say good-bye to us on the bank of the Dnieper River. I was screaming and crying. I loved my father dearly and I must have had an inkling that he was leaving forever. My mother told me that when she fell asleep on the first night on the barge I got out of the bilge and almost fell into the water. My mother caught me at the last moment. I was crying and screaming that I wanted to go to my Daddy.
There were 3 of us going to the evacuation: my mother, my 7 year old sister Mura and I that had just reached three. My mother told me that before the evacuation she and my father made a fire in the stove to burn all our photographs and documents. I crawled to them and took out a small package with photographs from the pile and put it into the pillowcase of my little pillow. Later they put this pillow into one of the suitcases and we left. Half a year passed until my mother noticed that there was something hard in my pillow and she found this package with photographs and my father’s scarf. They are our only pre-war pictures.
I would also like to mention that my mother found some room in these two suitcases to put two children’s books of fairy-tales with bright pictures for her small children.
We traveled on the barge down the Dnipro river to Dnepropetrovsk, and from there we went to the town of Mozdok at the Caucasus. We lived there for a year when my mother was notified that my father was missing. He was a radio operator and in 1941 he stayed on the occupied territory. In other words, he was working in the underground and he perished at the end of 1941. This may have happened in Darnitsa camp for prisoners of war. My father looked a typical Jew. Besides, he was circumcised when a child. I think that if he had been captured by the Germans he would have had no chance to survive. In 1941 my mother received the notification that he had been missing. And only ten years later we got to know some details of his death.
On the way to Mozdok I got ill and we had to get off the train. Later we heard that this train was bombed killing everybody that was there. We had to evacuate from Mozdok, but my mother was late for the last train. She was desperate, but later there came another train. And that previous one was also destroyed by bombing and nobody survived. My mother used to say that God was protecting us during our trip.
I remember one cold night in the steppe in Turkmenia. There were 10 Russian families. We were travelling on the donkey driven wagons. We arrived at the collective farm where they were growing cotton. It was almost a desert. There were 10 clay-walled huts with no windows, only a door. Each family received a hut that could fit 4-5 people lying on the floor. There was no furniture, no chairs or tables. We had two suitcases that served us as furniture. Later we made clay floors from goat dung and saxaul remainder to make our dwelling a little warmer. It was hot during the daytime and very cold at night. We lived in this climate for 3 years. Our colony consisted of ten families. Each family had two or more children. There were no men among us. There were only women and children and I was the youngest. The Turkmenians lived in their aul and didn’t treat us well. Or, to put it mildly, they treated us badly.
Although I was the youngest I learned to understand them and speak a little. They treated my mother and me a little bit better and even sold us pumpkins and some food at the beginning. But after they found out that my mother was sharing this food with other tenants, they quit selling us food. Our food was what whatever little we got from the collective farm. We didn’t get any bread, and our food was carrots. Early in the morning our mother went to the fields and we, children, remained by ourselves without any food or anybody to take care of us. There even was a vinary in that Turkmenian village, but I never tried any grapes while we were in the evacuation. When the cotton plants were blooming we were all allergic to its blossom. My mother’s food ration was a little bit bigger, because she got some additional food for my father that had perished at the front. My mother divided this food to gine to all children at our settlement. Once in these 3 years my mother received some candy. She put it in the small suitcase and was giving them to the children that were sick to ease their coughing. My sister and I never got ill and, therefore, never tried any candy.
There were no Jewish families in the evacuation. Therefore, Russian families treated us as Russians, and the Turmenians treated everybody that was not Turkmenian badly. I think one of the reasons why they didn’t like us was that they identified us as communists – invaders and oppressors. Middle Asia never accepted the Soviet power.
My father was mobilized to the army from the first days of the war. He came to say good-bye to us on the bank of the Dnieper River. I was screaming and crying. I loved my father dearly and I must have had an inkling that he was leaving forever. My mother told me that when she fell asleep on the first night on the barge I got out of the bilge and almost fell into the water. My mother caught me at the last moment. I was crying and screaming that I wanted to go to my Daddy.
There were 3 of us going to the evacuation: my mother, my 7 year old sister Mura and I that had just reached three. My mother told me that before the evacuation she and my father made a fire in the stove to burn all our photographs and documents. I crawled to them and took out a small package with photographs from the pile and put it into the pillowcase of my little pillow. Later they put this pillow into one of the suitcases and we left. Half a year passed until my mother noticed that there was something hard in my pillow and she found this package with photographs and my father’s scarf. They are our only pre-war pictures.
I would also like to mention that my mother found some room in these two suitcases to put two children’s books of fairy-tales with bright pictures for her small children.
We traveled on the barge down the Dnipro river to Dnepropetrovsk, and from there we went to the town of Mozdok at the Caucasus. We lived there for a year when my mother was notified that my father was missing. He was a radio operator and in 1941 he stayed on the occupied territory. In other words, he was working in the underground and he perished at the end of 1941. This may have happened in Darnitsa camp for prisoners of war. My father looked a typical Jew. Besides, he was circumcised when a child. I think that if he had been captured by the Germans he would have had no chance to survive. In 1941 my mother received the notification that he had been missing. And only ten years later we got to know some details of his death.
On the way to Mozdok I got ill and we had to get off the train. Later we heard that this train was bombed killing everybody that was there. We had to evacuate from Mozdok, but my mother was late for the last train. She was desperate, but later there came another train. And that previous one was also destroyed by bombing and nobody survived. My mother used to say that God was protecting us during our trip.
I remember one cold night in the steppe in Turkmenia. There were 10 Russian families. We were travelling on the donkey driven wagons. We arrived at the collective farm where they were growing cotton. It was almost a desert. There were 10 clay-walled huts with no windows, only a door. Each family received a hut that could fit 4-5 people lying on the floor. There was no furniture, no chairs or tables. We had two suitcases that served us as furniture. Later we made clay floors from goat dung and saxaul remainder to make our dwelling a little warmer. It was hot during the daytime and very cold at night. We lived in this climate for 3 years. Our colony consisted of ten families. Each family had two or more children. There were no men among us. There were only women and children and I was the youngest. The Turkmenians lived in their aul and didn’t treat us well. Or, to put it mildly, they treated us badly.
Although I was the youngest I learned to understand them and speak a little. They treated my mother and me a little bit better and even sold us pumpkins and some food at the beginning. But after they found out that my mother was sharing this food with other tenants, they quit selling us food. Our food was what whatever little we got from the collective farm. We didn’t get any bread, and our food was carrots. Early in the morning our mother went to the fields and we, children, remained by ourselves without any food or anybody to take care of us. There even was a vinary in that Turkmenian village, but I never tried any grapes while we were in the evacuation. When the cotton plants were blooming we were all allergic to its blossom. My mother’s food ration was a little bit bigger, because she got some additional food for my father that had perished at the front. My mother divided this food to gine to all children at our settlement. Once in these 3 years my mother received some candy. She put it in the small suitcase and was giving them to the children that were sick to ease their coughing. My sister and I never got ill and, therefore, never tried any candy.
There were no Jewish families in the evacuation. Therefore, Russian families treated us as Russians, and the Turmenians treated everybody that was not Turkmenian badly. I think one of the reasons why they didn’t like us was that they identified us as communists – invaders and oppressors. Middle Asia never accepted the Soviet power.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Ella Lukatskaya