Tag #154359 - Interview #90535 (Leonid Kotliar)

My father’s brother Idel was taken to a fighting battalion in early July 1941. They were to fight landing units. On 17 September 1941 he got in encirclement near Kiev and perished there. My friend Yura Belskiy also perished in this encirclement.  My father’s brother Samson was also mobilized in early July 1941. He was wounded, but returned to his unit after he recovered and was at the front until the end of the war.  

I was mobilized on 11 July 1941, when German troops were approaching Kiev. Our district military registry office formed a unit and we marched in civilian clothes to the east. Then we came to Mariupol [700 km east of Kiev] by train, to a camp from where we were to be sent to the front. We slept on grass and had meals in shifts. There were about one hundred thousand of us in the camp.  They took away our passports, but we didn’t get our Red Army identity cards yet. When military representatives came from the front we were lined up. Each VUS (military recorded profession) had a number and when my number (# 50 — artillery communication operators) was called, I stepped ahead. However, when I showed my certificate issued by the hospital they left me where I was.  All of my friends from Kiev went to the front.  I couldn’t sleep at night. I looked deep into my soul, tore my certificate to smallest pieces and a few days later I was already at the front.