Tag #156409 - Interview #92302 (Klara-Zenta Kanevskaya)

By spring 1942 my parents and my brother died. My sister and I survived, but she couldn’t get up any more. I managed to find a job as an unskilled worker at the Vpered factory. That machine-building factory was situated not far from our house and I managed to get there with my last bit of strength. Having worked at the factory for a very short period, I lost my pass. During the war time all factories were considered to be military units, therefore the loss of pass could cause serious troubles. I went to the director, and at that moment a secretary of the Communist Party organization of the factory was present in his study. [The secretary of the factory Communist Party organization was nominally the leader of employees – Communist Party members, but de facto he was in the same position as the director.] They gave me a kind reception and asked a lot of questions about my family. I looked awful, more dead than alive, and they decided to send me to the soup-kitchen for a high-calorie diet. They called for the factory doctor. The doctor said: ‘Don’t you see that she is not able to reach the soup-kitchen, we should take her to the hospital immediately!’ Together with my sister – who was in an even worse state – I was sent to a military hospital, which had allocated 800 beds for citizens of Leningrad, who were suffering from dystrophy. It was in May 1942, trams were already in operation and we took a tram, otherwise it would have been impossible for us to reach the hospital. I’ll never forget the friendly reception they gave us. We had a wash and changed our clothes for new and clean ones. In the large ward there were about 50 patients. We spent two months there. We had three meals and 600 grams of bread a day. We hadn’t seen so much bread for a long time.