Tag #118885 - Interview #91238 (Judel Ronder)

Our passports had been taken right away and we went far in taiga. We had covered about 180 kilometers of God forsaken woods and arrived at local hamlet. We were housed in the hostel and the next day we went to the mine. It was a new mine and every day we had to dig about 6 deep pits. The waters were dripping behind the collar making it really cold. I had never worked so hard in my life. In the morning we had warm porridge without butter and then we had to toil all day long. There were a lot of drunkards in the village. Everyday the men were drafted in the army, so vodka and moon shine were gone. There was even no eau-de-Cologne from the local store. We also went to the military enlistment office, but Lithuanian people had not been drafted yet as there was no trust in them at that time. There at the mine we made friends with young man Kopelev and he decided to help with the transfer for timber cutting. We took us in his place. His mother, a kind Russian woman, gave us some food and tried to convince us that we should leave this place as we would not survive the winter here. She advised that we should go to HR department and take our passports back. It took us a long time to convince our boss. I said that I wanted to study and Volodya said that he had a heart trouble ( it was the truth). The HR manager was sorry for us and he gave us our passports back.