Tag #129560 - Interview #94180 (Maria Yakovlevna Komarovskaya)

I had just finished 8 grades and was going to Oster to my grandparents. But on July 5 we went to evacuation. The husband of my mother’s sister took us to the train station and put on a train with the wives of his colleagues. At the train station we stood for another 5 days, during which my father was taken to the army. So, we traveled all over Ukraine. We went through Donbass and reached Uzlovaya station 200 km off Moscow. Then we were put on heated wagon and taken further on. There were many families in these wagons and all of them sat and slept on their bags and suitcases. When the train stopped we were afraid to get off it, so we just bought foods from the peasants who would come up to our train. We got off in the village of Podgornoye, Tambov region. My mother and I worked in a collective farm there.
Then, in autumn, we moved eastward on. The Germans were approaching, and we evacuated to Orenburg. Our far relatives lived there and we stayed with them for a few months.