Tag #144481 - Interview #78227 (frieda stoyanovskaya)

At the beginning of the war Kiev was full of the people from the western parts of Ukraine. There were many Jews among them; there were some that we knew. They stayed with us. It was from them that I heard about the Germans' attitude towards the Jews. But again, this resulted in our decision to leave Kiev as soon as possible. On 6th July we left on the writers' train to be evacuated to Ufa, Bashkyria. We were running away from the war with one little suitcase, full of photographs and diapers. We had our 4-month- old Lyonechka [Leonid] and 6-year-old Victor with us, as well as my mother. We were running away from the raids and had no idea what occupation was like. We couldn't imagine the horrors of it. So, the four of us left. My sister Ida, her husband and their two daughters were in Zhytomir at the beginning of the war. They found us in Bashkyria later.