Tag #147342 - Interview #83476 (Motel Meilakhs)

I remember well the first raid of Volynet’s gang [1918]. My cousin grabbed my hand and dragged me through kitchen gardens to the peasants, where we were given shelter and were fed until the end of the day. The neighbor of the owner came and told him, that the gangsters were riding through the village, shouting: ‘Drive out the Jews, or we will shoot the owner!’ And the landlady, Taraska Kudina, took me from the stove and, calming me down, lead me to the ‘klunya’ and hid me behind the sheaves. A ‘klunya’ is a shed, where they stock sheaves. She left me there and came every half an hour to remind me that I should sit quietly. In a couple of hours she came back and said that the gang had left, and led me to my parents. I also remember a raid of Denikin [16] bandits. All the girls hid in villagers’ houses, and the majority of them ran to the house of our priest, Nikolai Ivanovich Kopeiko. And he gave them shelter and food until the gangsters left.