Tag #135207 - Interview #77957 (Rachel Gitelis)

There were people from Bessarabia [12] who had been traveling for a long time. They had lice and we contracted lice from them. There was no food on the boat either. We reached Novorossiysk, a port on the Black Sea in Krasnodarskiy region [200 km from Odessa]. There we could either exchange our clothes for food or buy some. We got on the train heading for Karaganda region in Kazakhstan. When the train stopped we could go and buy some food again. It was my duty to fetch some water to wash ourselves and drink. Our trip lasted a week, or longer, before we arrived at Jan-Arka station, Karaganda region, Kazakhstan [2,000 km from Odessa]. We rented a small room with two single beds in it from a Kazakh family, where we lived throughout the evacuation period. They had a cow and every morning our landlady left a jar of milk at our door. 'This is for the children', she used to say.