Tag #129955 - Interview #78780 (Valeria Boguslavskaya)

My mother's younger brother Lyova, who lived in Kharkov with my grandmother Hana and was going to evacuate along with the tractor plant, said that he could only take my grandmother, my mother and my older sister with him as members of his family. My father's sister Esther-Malka was mobilized to the army in the first days of the war. She was staying near Kharkov where a hospital train was being formed and she decided to take me and my grandmother Zlata with her. She believed that at least we would have food on the train. My father was in the air-defense troops. His unit was retreating from Kharkov to Stalingrad. My mother decided that it would be better for me and my grandmother Zlata to join Esther-Malka. It happened so that we separated at the very beginning of the war: my father was on the way to Stalingrad, my mother and Nelia evacuated with Lyova and my grandmother Zlata and I joined the hospital train.