Tag #143713 - Interview #78181 (Maya Dembo)

Our house #27 on Dobrolyubova Street, where we had lived before the war, hadn't remained intact; a bomb hit it. My father got a room in a communal apartment in building #23 on the same street. The room was on the second floor, it was a pillbox during the war, our soldiers shot from it. My father had to break off the bricks from the window openings with a crow-bar and to make new windows. The room was crammed with furniture, gathered from the whole building and everything had to be taken out. The communal apartment was rather big, designed for six families.

There was a kitchen with a wood-stove and a wash-basin, where huge fat rats sat, well-fed on the corpses during the siege. Those rats were afraid of no one. There was also a tiny toilet, which didn't work properly. Torn electric wires and pieces of wallpaper hung from everywhere. Nevertheless, little by little, neighbors appeared and life returned to normal.