Tag #145783 - Interview #102250 (Zoya Shapochnik)

My mother was constantly writing letters to the information center in Buguruslan, desperate to find my father. Finally, in spring 1943 she got a response saying that my father was working for a mining enterprise in the Uzbek town Chirchiq [3500km from Kishinev]. My mother wrote him a letter and he replied. My father wrote about his hardship. He had spent a night at the train station, wherefrom he managed to get his traveling fellow on the train. He failed to leave. He fell asleep on the bench and at night his watch and remaining money were stolen. My father was in despair. It seemed to him that he had lost everybody: first his father, then his wife, and me. There he was caught by the raid aiming to pick the men eligible for military service. He was drafted into the labor front [24] and sent to work in the mines, first to Angren [today Uzbekistan], then to Chirchiq.