Galina Barskaya and her son Roman Natov

I, Galina Barskaya, and my son, Roman Natov, in evacuation. We sent this photo to my husband to the front. The inscription says, ‘To dad - remember mom and son.’ The photo was taken in Pervouralsk on 24th December 1942.

In 1938 I gave birth to our son. When I began to work at the Spanish orphanage I was not yet pregnant. When my son was born, children from this orphanage came to the hospital to visit me, brought me flowers and a huge cake, on which they wrote ‘Ramon.’ That was the name they decided to give to my son. So, I called him Ramon, and he later changed his name to Roman, which was more common here.

After the war broke out, we left Kiev. The thing is that as soon as we came to Pervouralsk, on 1st October 1941, my husband was called up to the army, and on 14th October he was sent to the front. I don’t know why it happened, maybe somebody was envious about our happiness. Before his departure my sister threw a party, and for the first time in his life my husband got drunk. We did not even say a proper goodbye to each other.

We kept up a correspondence with him. I still have his pictures from the front. I also have his letters, where he wrote how much he loved my son and me, and what a wonderful life we would have after the war.

Well, there was no happy life after the war. In 1944, I was summoned to the military committee and given a death certificate for my husband. He was killed in fighting for the village of Babinovichi, Belarus.