Tag #156048 - Interview #94776 (Grigoriy Stelmakh)

Finally in 1943 Kiev was liberated. My father took part in the attack with armored troops. He sent us a permit for reevacuation and we went home. I have dim memories about our return trip. We arrived in Kiev in winter. My father was with his unit somewhere near Zhytomir. I was struck to see the destitution and ruins in Kiev. Where was this beautiful town they told me about? There were other tenants in our apartment. Our neighbors took our furniture, carpets, and the piano and crystal crockery. When my mother asked them to return our belongings they replied that she had to be happy to have survived and that she wasn’t with those ‘zhydy’ [kike] buried in Babi Yar [16], и and closed the door before her. Then my father came to Kiev for few days. He went to see this neighbor and threatened him with a gun and they returned our belongings. However, we didn’t have a place to live and we went to my mother’s aunt Dvoira Brodskaya. Life was hard. There was little food and I had to stand in long lines for bread sold by coupons. I also remember delicacies: American canned meat and egg powder that my father sent us occasionally. I went to school in 1946 and we wrote on newspaper sheet margins since there were no notebooks or textbooks.

We lived so until 1947.