Tag #143296 - Interview #92684 (Semyon Ghendler)

It took us four days to get to Kharkov, about 450 km away. In Kharkov we stayed with our distant relatives for about a month. Everybody still believed that the war was to be over soon and we would return home.  In early August grandfather Iegoshua and grandmother Esther came to Kharkov. German troops were near Zhytomir. We moved on to the East. Our trip lasted for about a month and a half. When the train stopped we exchanged what we had with us for food.  I remember exchanging a bar of soap for a carrot that I brought in my cap to the railcar. I was very proud of myself. At times we got a hot meal at stations, but most often it was some boiling water. We arrived in Cheliabinsk in the Ural, 1500 kilometers from our home. Cheliabinsk was a big industrial town. There were many plants in the town and many enterprises evacuated from the western part of the country.  We stayed in the evacuation agency few days until we were accommodated in a barrack with other families. It was a wooden barrack with plywood or curtain partitions. My mother, my sister and I and my grandfather Iegoshua and my grandmother Esther lived in one of these small rooms several days until uncle Aron who came to Cheliabinsk after we did went to work at a big plant and received a room. He was manager of metal stocks at the plant.