Tag #146580 - Interview #78019 (Rita Kazhdan)

Once, having covered over 30 km, we met partisans from the Semyonovsky regiment. But they were on their way to a military mission and weren't able to take us with them. They explained which village we had to go to, which hut to enter and where we should wait for their return. They kept their word: on the way back they took us along to the partisan district. Thus, we found ourselves in the Zorinskiy partisan group, as we got to know later, in the 106th regiment. They constructed shelters from fir boughs, gave us boots and two sheepskin coats. In the winter we moved to the central camp. We dug up potatoes, our principal food, in the burnt villages. Our regiment fought the last battle with the Germans in June 1944, when the Soviet army liberated Belarus. The Germans fell back. So for us the war was over on exactly this day. In our regiment we each were issued a certificate, straight on the cart, stating that from 12th September 1943 until 6th June 1944 we were in the 106th partisan regiment.