Tag #144804 - Interview #83317 (Margarita Farka )

Grandmother’s parents lived in Orsha almost all their lives. I was told that they were religious people observing traditions: the kashrut, Sabbath, celebrating traditional holidays and attending the synagogue. In 1941, when the Great Patriotic War broke out, they managed to evacuate to Sverdlovsk region in the Urals, at the very last moment before the Germans arrived. [Sverdlovsk region was set up in 1934 in the Middle Urals, about 2,000 km east of St. Petersburg; in the 1930s/1940s large defense, machine-construction and metallurgical plants were built there, which played a very important part during the years of the Great Patriotic War.] They were provided lodging in a village. They could not work in the kolkhoz [8] because of their age and health, that is why they lived very poorly. They died of starvation, as a matter of fact, in 1942. They were buried there, at a common rural cemetery.