Tag #148495 - Interview #78035 (marina sineokaya)

On Sunday, 22nd June 1941, I was at home. It was the summer term and I was getting ready for exams. My pallid and perturbed mother entered my room and said that Germany had attacked the USSR without declaring war and there would be Molotov’s [27] speech on the radio devoted to that. All of us listened to Molotov’s speech and we couldn’t believe that the Germans had violated the non-aggression pact, but it happened. At home I announced at once that I wanted to be in the lines as a volunteer. My mother tried to convince me not to go to the front by saying that only girls who were radio-operators or nurses were required on the front, but such a sissy urban girl as I would be nothing but a burden. I really was a pampered girl. When I was sick, my mother heated the thermometer in her hands before putting it under my armpit. I didn’t want to take nurse courses as I was scared to see blood.