Tag #150493 - Interview #78242 (Ruvin Gitman)

On 22nd June my friends and I had a party to celebrate our obtaining of school certificates. Many of us were going on to study in other towns. We partied all night. When I came home on the morning of 22nd June 1941 my parents were not home. They had gone to the market in Kopaygorod. I sent my younger brother and sister to play in the yard so that I could have a good sleep. I slept like a log until I woke up hearing someone knocking on the door and on the windows. It was my schoolmate. I asked him why he was knocking as if a house was on fire. He said, 'Worse than that. The war has begun'. That was my memory of the beginning of the war. There was an announcement on the radio. Kiev had been bombed.