Tag #148927 - Interview #78765 (Sara Ushpitsene)

The trains heading for the East were at Minsk railway station. We left the cart with the horses and took the locomotive train which was packed with people. There were a lot of Jews from Lithuania, Poland and Belarus. Fortunately, my mother took food, rusks and some fats with her and we weren’t starving. We traveled for two weeks and reached Cheboksary in the Urals [about 600 km from Moscow]. Many Jews got off the train here and we decided to do the same. We were given a warm welcome. At first, we were at the evacuation point, where we had a chance to take a shower. Then we were housed with local Russians. The six of us lived in one small room and were very happy for it. The hosts were very hospitable. They treated us to cabbage pies. In a couple of days my brothers went to work at a dairy farm. Father also found a job, only Mother and I stayed at home. While it was warm, my brothers slept in a hay stack. We weren’t starving as my mother had some flour in stock. Besides, my brothers started getting rations. When it started getting cold in the fall, we realized that we wouldn’t survive the cold Ural winter without warm things. One of Father’s young friends, an intelligent Jew from Minsk, talked Father into leaving his job. In the fall of 1941 we took the train to Tashkent [today capital of Uzbekistan] – fugitives went there because of the warm climate, abundant fruit and vegetables.