Selected text
And in the morning we had to put them on again and go to work, which was quite far away.
We worked at a plant that produced bullets. I worked as a turner. I was always a very good worker and was ahead of schedule. My photo was always posted on the board of honor. We worked for 16 or 18 hours a day. And sometimes we spent the nights in the workshop, because it was a very long way back to our barracks -- five or six kilometers on foot. In Barnaul the temperature was minus 40 degrees C0, and we were just in quilted jackets. Everybody's hands and legs were frostbitten. When we stayed at the workshop overnight we would hide somewhere under a short flight of stairs to sleep.
We were paid salaries for our work. We could go to the market, buy a head of cabbage and eat it raw. I remember that we also bought frozen milk. For bread we had ration cards – 800 grams of bread per day. We got cereal with ration cards, too, and there was also something else - I don’t remember. It was quiet in Barnaul, it didn’t feel as if there was a war on. People went about their daily lives. For some reason boys ran and sold water in glasses, a glass cost 10 kopecks. It was a hard life, but sometimes we arranged parties in the barracks; we sang, danced. We were young, we were only 15 to 20 years old.
We worked at a plant that produced bullets. I worked as a turner. I was always a very good worker and was ahead of schedule. My photo was always posted on the board of honor. We worked for 16 or 18 hours a day. And sometimes we spent the nights in the workshop, because it was a very long way back to our barracks -- five or six kilometers on foot. In Barnaul the temperature was minus 40 degrees C0, and we were just in quilted jackets. Everybody's hands and legs were frostbitten. When we stayed at the workshop overnight we would hide somewhere under a short flight of stairs to sleep.
We were paid salaries for our work. We could go to the market, buy a head of cabbage and eat it raw. I remember that we also bought frozen milk. For bread we had ration cards – 800 grams of bread per day. We got cereal with ration cards, too, and there was also something else - I don’t remember. It was quiet in Barnaul, it didn’t feel as if there was a war on. People went about their daily lives. For some reason boys ran and sold water in glasses, a glass cost 10 kopecks. It was a hard life, but sometimes we arranged parties in the barracks; we sang, danced. We were young, we were only 15 to 20 years old.
Period
Location
Russia
Interview
Irina Voinova