Klara Vul’s summons to post-blockade Leningrad

Summons to post-blockade Leningrad.

We survived until 1942, in the most hungry times, thanks to my Uncle Kostya. They were transferred to Leningrad from the Pre-Baltic area. He would bring to us loafs of bread and other food.

We survived and were evacuated. There was fear that Leningrad would be surrendered, so the order was issued to take away all the children. Mum didn't want to stay without her kids, and said: "Only if I go with them".

We together with Mum were evacuated to Sverdlovsk region, near Pyshminsky highway, I remember it well. I even remember the street, where we lived in a barrack [a building of light structure designed for temporary habitation].

It was the end of June 1942 - I was 14 years old, mother - 36. My father worked since we moved to Leningrad in 1939, at the Kirov factory as a voyenpred [military representative], not at his direct specialty.

They were making tanks and other military equipment there. And before this equipment got to the front, it was to pass the military quality control. And when the war began, he left for the irregular army near Luga and fought there. Many people got into encirclement there, but he, thank God, stayed alive by miracle.

In Sverdlovsk [nowadays Ekaterinburg] I finished a medical assistants school, I entered it in 1943, and graduated in 1945, received a specialty. And for Tsilya Mum rented a room, and she lived independently and was a student of the Pedagogical Institute in Sverdlovsk.

Tsilya is my sister, she was 3 years older than I. She was brought an honest and respectable person and was very clever. She received only excellent marks.

After graduation from the institute she was a teacher, taught literature and the Russian language, and when they returned from evacuation in 1946, she was a teacher in Koltushy [a small town near Leningrad].

It was a time of starvation and some teachers used to rob children, and she struggled against it, put up a whole fight. She ended up with an infarct and died in 1950, very young.

We didn't return from evacuation all at once. There was such an official by name Popkov8 in Leningrad. I wrote a letter to him: "I implore you, I want to restore my city. Send me a summons9, please!"
And in 1945 I received the summons and arrived to Leningrad.

In May I turned 18, and in September I arrived, and got a job as a medical assistant in the factory named after Plekhanov. After work we used to clean and restore the city all together.