Tag #144756 - Interview #78102 (Roman Barskiy)

I clearly remember the first and each following day of the war. (On 22
June 1941 at 5 o'clock in the morning, Nazi Germany attacked the
Soviet Union without declaring war. This was the beginning of the so-
named Great Patriotic War.) In the previous years, the kindergarten
moved to the country house in Ostyor, about 90 kilometers from Kiev.
But in 1941 we were staying in town for some reason. The children woke
up to the roar of bombing. I was 6 years old and was a senior in my
group. I remember evacuation. My father put us on a truck heading to
Kharkov. We only had one suitcase with us and my mother was holding my
sister. Somewhere near Poltava we were attacked by a Messerschmitt, a
powerful German fighter plane. It imprinted in my memory. The plane
flew so low that I could see the face of the pilot. He looked out of
the window and saw that there were no soldiers, just women and
children, and he flew away. He turned out to be a decent man even
though he was a German. I realized that it was a war from the first
day.