Tag #145316 - Interview #83224 (Ella Perlman)

My father heard on the radio about the attack of Germany on the Soviet Union on 22nd June 1941 [cf. Great Patriotic War] [15]. Mama, remembering the escape of Jewish refugees to Latvia, insisted that we left promptly. She used to say that the annexation of Latvia to the Soviet Union gave us a chance to survive by fleeing to the rear of Russia where the German army couldn’t reach us. My father was more optimistic about the situation, saying that Germans had already been in Latvia in 1915, and did no harm to the Jews. He was sure that the Germans were only going to fight the Bolsheviks [16], and had nothing against the Latvian population. However, he didn’t really argue with Mama.