Tag #147324 - Interview #83476 (Motel Meilakhs)

I went to an elementary school. My first teacher was Vasily Andreevich Meschik, a Ukrainian. In our settlement there were only four grades of elementary school. And then Father took me to another settlement of Dashev, not far from Tyrlitsa. I lived at my uncle’s home and went to school there. It was a seven-year school. There were only Ukrainians there. They liked to stress then, that they were Ukrainians, not Russians. I remember all of them with a warm feeling, especially Maria Sidorovna Samarina, the teacher of Botany. She was very kind and tender. The school was outside of the settlement, one or two kilometers away. And the teacher lived in the settlement too. We watched out for her, boys and girls, when she would leave for school, and joined her. And on the way she would tell us interesting stories, and we would confide our secrets to her as well.