Tag #155743 - Interview #103724 (Faina Saushkina Biography)

Our trip lasted for about a month until we arrived in Novosibirsk in 3000 km to the northeast from Kiev. We were accommodated in a villager’s house in a village near the town. The owners of the house welcomed us warmly and gave us food. In two days we went to work in the field, threshing ground and in the farm ground. I was very worried about my husband that might have sent his letters to Voronezh while I had no idea where or how he was. I went to ask chairman of the collective farm to help us obtain permission to go home and showed him my passport with a residential stamp for Voronezh. Chairman gave us food to take with us on the road and the district executive committee gave us money to buy tickets. The family and I went to the railway station. We spent there few days before we managed to get on a train – there were crowds of people wishing to leave. Manager of the station helped us to get on a train. We arrived at Voronezh and went home. Our neighbors cried on seeing us – they thought I had perished since they knew that when the war began I was in Slavuta near the border and they didn’t think my daughter and I had escaped. My father’s cousin Misha from Kiev was staying in our apartment. He left to search for his family in few days. My relatives didn’t get a residential permit to stay in Voronezh since there were many military enterprises in the town and for security reasons authorities didn’t issue such permits to all civilians. They: my mother, father, sisters Sarah and Manya, and brouther Naum, were accommodated in a collective farm near Voronezh – they worked at harvesting. I got letters from Alexandr. He was at the front. His sister and her husband stayed in Voronezh during the war. They were having a very hard time during the war. After the war they stayed to live in Voronezh. They died in 1970s. We corresponded and had very warm relationships, but we only saw them once when they visited us in Lvov in 1950s.