Tag #149564 - Interview #102205 (David Wainshelboim)

This was July 1941. Alchevsk was in the rear and it seemed that the Fascists were never to reach it. Our family decided to stay there. My father went to the town department of health and was appointed chief doctor of a hospital. We received a room at the hospital and settled there. There was little space to live, but we didn’t fret, having a roof over our heads and also, my father had a job. My sister, who had finished school, went to work as a receptionist at the hospital. I went to the eighth grade of a local school. Soon I became the best student in my class. However poor my Russian was, I studied better than many local classmates, helped them with their studies and made friends with them. Of course, we didn’t have sufficient food and this was a common situation, but we managed somehow. My father managed to get food products, received a food ration and once he brought home a bag of cereal. We even celebrated Jewish holidays. We fasted on Yom Kippur and celebrated Rosh Hashanah. We didn’t have any matzah for Pesach, but Grandmother baked something like it on the stove. We lived like this for a year.