Tag #146454 - Interview #103743 (Clara Shalenko)

We evacuated at the end of July 1941. My father was responsible for evacuation of children from the recreation center where he was secretary of the Party organization. There were children from many towns. My father also took his brother Abram and his family and me to evacuation. My mother was working at a military hospital and she couldn’t go with us. We boarded railroad platforms for transportation of cattle. We didn’t go far from Odessa when German planes began to drop bombs on our train. The children ran to hide in surrounding bushes and my father was trying to keep them together. My father was wearing white pants and other adults yelled at him ‘White pants, you decamouflage us – they will start bombing again’. My father didn’t have any clothing to change, though. The train and the rails were not damaged, we moved on. Uncle Abram and his family and I stayed with some relatives in Artymosvsk [570 km to the northwest of Odessa]. My father and children went to the next station of Debaltsevo – to take children to the children’s home there. We stayed few weeks in Artyomovsk having no information about my father. Since the frontline was getting closer we left Artyomovsk to go further to the east. We went by freight train and it was a hard trip. We came to Buguruslan [1 700 km from Odessa] of Orenburg region from where we were taken to Bolshoye Kuroedovo village on horse-driven carts.