Tag #151940 - Interview #78238 (maya kaganskaya)

A few of the best pupils and I were invited to the prom in our school on 20th June. After the prom we went for a walk in the town. On the next day we went to the railway station with a friend of ours that was leaving for Kovel [a town near the border with Poland] where her sister and her sister's husband lived. It turned out that all trains going in Western direction were cancelled. On our way back we noticed the scarlet sunset. The sky was like on fire. In the morning of 22nd June my mother and I heard some distant bursting sound, but we ignored IT. At about 9 o'clock I went to my music class in Podol. When I was on my way I heard the sound of sirens and I stayed a few minutes in an entrance to a house thinking that this was a training alarm requiring people to stay inside. For some reason the tram to Podol didn't commute. People waiting at a stop discussed what the reason might be. I walked on. One house in Podol was ruined by a bomb, but there was still no word about the war. I attended my class and then went to see a friend of mine who lived in Podol. It was early afternoon. A bright and sunny morning turned into a dull and gloomy afternoon. I met my friend walking with her friends. They told me about Molotov's 28 speech and about the war. We didn't feel scared since we were kids and couldn't imagine what a war was like.

Every day we had classes of civil defense at school. Every day I went to school in Podol with my gas mask on. In about ten days all boys from our and senior classes were sent to Donetsk for military reserve. We said goodbye to them wearing our fancy dresses and wrote poems for them. Almost all of them perished in Donetsk or at the front.