Tag #146841 - Interview #92368 (Lyudmila Kreslova)

In 1944 our army liberated Vitebsk from the Germans. Mother wrote a letter to the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, M.I. Kalinin [19], asking for a permission to return home. During the war years in order to come back to a liberated town after evacuation, one had to obtain an invitation from an enterprise or a family member. We received a reply from M.I. Kalinin’s chancellery, saying, ‘Not a stone was left standing in Vitebsk, so you can’t go there. You have no man to take care of you, so you can’t return.’ After that Mother asked for a permission to go to Leningrad, where her sisters lived, or to Vyshniy Volochok, where her husband’s sister lived. Thus we obtained a pass to Vyshniy Volochok.