Tag #132780 - Interview #78135 (esfir dener)

We worked at the wood cutting site. We got up at 6 o'clock in the morning. We had some cereal for breakfast and then left the camp. We had black wadded pants, quilted jackets and pea-jackets. We formed a line and every morning the convoy chief informed us, ‘A step to the right, a step to the left is a try to escape. I will shoot without a warning'. There were wardens with machine guns and dogs on leashes. So we marched at gun-point to work in the woods. We worked hard from morning till night. We sawed wood with manual saws with wooden handles. At first we made a notch on the wood with a heavy ax and then we put a saw into this notch. We sawed into about a quarter of a trunk and then pushed the tree with picaroons into the direction where it had to fall. And this was us, women, doing this! Then we chopped off branches and boughs and then tractors hauled these trunks away.