Tag #146456 - Interview #103743 (Clara Shalenko)

In October 1941 we left for Fergana [3 000 km from Odessa in Uzbekistan] a small dusty town of one-storied mud-houses. In Fergana my uncle Abram went to work at the bakery. He was a communist and was appointed director of the bakery. Life was very hard and we starved. Abram’s wife Manya said to me ‘Clara, you are a big girl and it is hard for us to provide for you. Go to the Party town committee and tell them to accommodate you since you’ve lost your parents’. The town committee sent me to the town industrial association where I got a bed in a hostel – there were two other girls in the room. They were in evacuation, but they were not Jewish. We were sewing winter coats for the front, but we still earned a little and had little food. We got a piece of bread, boiled water, tea and few raisins in the canteen. I had no information about my father or mother and missed them a lot.