Tag #143449 - Interview #78413 (Galina Shmuilovna Levina)

I was evacuated together with my kindergarten. There was such a mess! So the kindergarten went to Pestovo railway station [not far from Leningrad], and German troops arrived there, too. All our tutors ran away, leaving the children. I don’t know what was going on with other children, I heard that somebody gathered them back and put them on some train or echelon, and it was bombed all over. However, outwardly I looked typically Jewish – big dark eyes, dark, almost black hair – and local inhabitants started to hide me in their homes. They took me together with another boy, I don’t know if he was Jewish or not. I remember this entire situation quite dimly, I know that they transferred me from one house to another, and also that I had some plastic dolls and I was playing with them. Then Mother reached this station somehow and took me away together with this boy, before the blockade [of Leningrad] ever started. She went to Pestovo by horses and echelons, and we returned back with numerous stops and transfers. I can say only that I’m very thankful till today to all those people, who hid me, risking their lives, and there were no Jews among them.