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The kolkhoz gave us bread and a bag of dried bread to go and I staffed my shirt with tobacco leaves. We were taken to the station and from there we went to Stalingrad [Volgograd at present, today Russia]. From there we went to Astrakhan where we stayed at the railway station 10 days waiting for a boat. It was good that we had tobacco with us. I smoked since the age of ten, but we also exchanged tobacco leaves for food. My sister had accommodation in the room for women with children and I slept curling up by the door. Once a high-ranked NKVD [21] officer woke me up. I tried to run away, but he after asking me who I was and where I came from, he treated me to tea and cookies and told me to not be afraid of anybody there. About ten days later we took a boat to Makhachkala. We met few people from Krasilov there. My sister friend Gitl Fishel’s husband worked in the port. They took us to their home. Their apartment was packed with evacuated people. We stayed about ten days on the staircase near their apartment. Looking back into the past I am astonished at how lucky my sister and I got. Once we bumped into a militiaman with a gun in Makhachkala convoying an arrestant. My sister recognized her classmate from Krasilov in him. Unfortunately, I’ve forgotten his name. He was evacuated to Makhachkala with a militia office from Krasilov. He helped us obtain bread coupons and made arrangements for us to have free meals in a diner. He also got train tickets for us. It was required to have a permit to leave Makhachkala for Baku. We took a train and reached the Khachmaz station [today Azerbaijan] where there was a raid all of a sudden. Frontier men ordered all passengers without a permit to gather on the platforms. There was a fee to be paid to come onto the platform and platforms were fenced. I helped my sister to climb over the fence and then I climbed over it and we jumped off on the other side of the fence escaping from the raid. It was 9 o’clock in the evening. It was dark and cold. This was November. My sister had a vest on and I was wearing a jacket. We had no clothes with us. My sister began crying and I tried to console her. We went to the town. Khachmaz was like an orchid. There were fruit trees growing in the streets. We went to an open air cinema where we enjoyed watching the prewar comedy ‘Ivan Ivanovich is angry’. After the movie we spent the night on a bench in the park. In the morning I left my sister and went to town looking for a place to stay. I saw a nice woman of oriental appearance at the market. She was selling apples. I asked her whether she could help me to find a place where we could stay. We went from one house to another, but there was nothing for us and this woman took my sister and me to her house, though she didn’t know who we were. I am still grateful that she accommodated us, total strangers, and treated us like her own family. I only don’t remember her name. We were accommodated on a glass windowed verandah. The hostess, her husband and their five or seven children were in the house. We didn’t go out fearing another raid. Once, when there was nobody at home I saw a little boy dragging a book with Hebrew writing in it. I picked the book. It was Talmud. So I discovered that we were in the family of mountain Jews. Our host and hostess were very happy to hear that we were Jews. They didn’t want to let us go, but we were eager to go to Baku. Then they found my aunt and a few days later she came to visit us and there was a military man accompanying her. My aunt gave us and our landlords some money. She couldn’t take us with her since we didn’t have a permit. The hostess’ husband came to our rescue. He was a smuggler. He crossed the mountains to Iran to purchase some goods there. He knew all paths and roads well. He described us the way we should take in detail. We had to reach a certain station, say a password at a baker’s shop and they were to take us across the mountains. It was as he said. A few days some taciturn people lead us across the mountains and then put us on a train to Baku. We finally reached Baku. We headed to Mirzofatali Street where our aunt lived. I almost got in a raid on the way, but I saw the militiamen on time and hid behind some box-tree bushes in a garden. When we finally came to my aunt she was overwhelmed with joy.
Period
Interview
Arkadi Milgrom