Tag #151645 - Interview #78225 (Iosif Gurevich)

22nd June 1941 was a Sunday. We were on vacation from school. I finished my 9th year at school and was planning to enter a college in Kiev. We thought that while on vacation I would go to my mother's sister Riva in Kiev to choose a college. That morning my mother went shopping and I was still sleeping. My mother came home without any goods and said that Germany had unleashed war on the USSR. We were patriots and believed Stalin and the Party. Stalin said that we would beat the enemy on his own territory. So, why worry? People believed that the war wouldn't last long. Nobody hurried to evacuate. Only two plants were evacuated from Konotop. Workers' families and equipment left on two trains. Then people began to evacuate.