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We all lived in a small room in a dormitory: my mother and me, the wife of my mother’s brother Shimon with two children, my mother’s sister Liza with her daughter and two mother’s cousins.
Then the husband of my mother’s sister found my father who was a commissary in an air college in Chkalovsk, not far from Orenburg, and he took us to live with him. Mother went to work at a telegraph. She did not work before the war, but there she learned and began to work at a telegraph.
In Chkalovsk I went to the 9th class. I went there in February, so I had to study a lot in order to catch up with my class because I had missed a lot. I was a good student. And I finished all 10 grades successfully. We had different students at our class: locals and evacuated. There were many Jews too. It is funny, but the local population never saw Jews before, so they were nice to us.
Our life was hard, just like everybody else’s life. We received bread for bread cards. We had to stand in lines since early morning, even night in order to get bread. I remember one time I stood in a line since very early morning, but the local women pushed me out of the line and I could not get my bread. They treated me like an enemy. But it was not caused by me being Jewish; I think they treated me like that only because I was not a local resident.
I finished school in evacuation and entered university. A branch of the Kharkov Institute of Railway Engineers had just opened there; the main office was in Tashkent at the time. In 1944 I went to Kharkov together with other students of that Institute because Kharkov was already free of the Germans. My parents remained in evacuation. My father was badly wounded during the war so he was an invalid.
Then the husband of my mother’s sister found my father who was a commissary in an air college in Chkalovsk, not far from Orenburg, and he took us to live with him. Mother went to work at a telegraph. She did not work before the war, but there she learned and began to work at a telegraph.
In Chkalovsk I went to the 9th class. I went there in February, so I had to study a lot in order to catch up with my class because I had missed a lot. I was a good student. And I finished all 10 grades successfully. We had different students at our class: locals and evacuated. There were many Jews too. It is funny, but the local population never saw Jews before, so they were nice to us.
Our life was hard, just like everybody else’s life. We received bread for bread cards. We had to stand in lines since early morning, even night in order to get bread. I remember one time I stood in a line since very early morning, but the local women pushed me out of the line and I could not get my bread. They treated me like an enemy. But it was not caused by me being Jewish; I think they treated me like that only because I was not a local resident.
I finished school in evacuation and entered university. A branch of the Kharkov Institute of Railway Engineers had just opened there; the main office was in Tashkent at the time. In 1944 I went to Kharkov together with other students of that Institute because Kharkov was already free of the Germans. My parents remained in evacuation. My father was badly wounded during the war so he was an invalid.
Period
Location
Chkalovsk
Nizhegorodskaya oblast'
Russia
Interview
Maria Yakovlevna Komarovskaya
Tag(s)