Tag #118129 - Interview #100315 (Geta Jakiene)

We reached Smolensk on that car. Here Shakalis and Khakhlymov came to the military enlistment office. Both of them were drafted in the army and sent to the front right away as they were communists. Shakalis’s wife was sent to agricultural works in kolkhoz [8] in the vicinity of Smolensk. I did not know anything about fieldwork and the next day I was assigned as an assistant to the secretary of komsomol organization. I had worked for a while. People had a very good attitude to me. In general, Russian people turned out to be very kind and outgoing. Probably I would stay there, but some unexpected meeting changed my life. I must have been protected by God. I met the fugitives, Polish Jews, on the square by administration building. They had already known what was happening to the Jews an they were talking me into heading towards the East. This is what I decided to do. I took the locomotive train with my new pals, who treated me like a relative.