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After my 3rd year I went for practical training to Zaporozhiye [250 km from Kharkov]. On 22nd June 1941 we went on an excursion to the Dnepro power plant near Zaporozhiye. It was a beautiful sunny day. We got off the bus and saw a crowd of people listening to a radio on a post. It was Molotov's [12] speech about the beginning of the war in the USSR. I knew that Europe was in war, but we were assured by propaganda that Hitler wouldn't dare to attack the Soviet Union. We rushed back to our hostel, and our management called the Institute and told us that we were to go back to Kharkov. We managed to get train tickets and returned to Kharkov within a few days.
I soon received a letter from my parents in Poltava. They wrote that my father had got an assignment to the oil terminal in Orsk, Ural, and my mother and I could go there by train. My mother wrote that the train was to stop for a longer interval in Donbass, and I could join her there. She had had some time to pack our luggage, which made our situation during evacuation easier. We met two days later in the town of Solnechnoye, Donbass. From there we headed to the Ural. We saw bombed down trains on our way and our train avoided air raids only by some miracle.
We managed to get to Chkalov [3,000 km from Poltava]. Zholtoye village, where the oil terminal was located, was between Chkalov and Orsk. My mother and I were waiting for our father to arrive. We were helpless without him. My mother had never worked before, and I didn't have a profession. Some time later my father's sisters, Runia and Lisa, and Lisa's daughter, Vera, arrived in Zholtoye. We were informed that my father had arrived at the oil terminal, but that he was ill. He had pneumonia before the war. He had left Poltava on a truck and caught a cold which resulted in tuberculosis. He was very ill, but there was no hospital or medication in Zholtoye.
I soon received a letter from my parents in Poltava. They wrote that my father had got an assignment to the oil terminal in Orsk, Ural, and my mother and I could go there by train. My mother wrote that the train was to stop for a longer interval in Donbass, and I could join her there. She had had some time to pack our luggage, which made our situation during evacuation easier. We met two days later in the town of Solnechnoye, Donbass. From there we headed to the Ural. We saw bombed down trains on our way and our train avoided air raids only by some miracle.
We managed to get to Chkalov [3,000 km from Poltava]. Zholtoye village, where the oil terminal was located, was between Chkalov and Orsk. My mother and I were waiting for our father to arrive. We were helpless without him. My mother had never worked before, and I didn't have a profession. Some time later my father's sisters, Runia and Lisa, and Lisa's daughter, Vera, arrived in Zholtoye. We were informed that my father had arrived at the oil terminal, but that he was ill. He had pneumonia before the war. He had left Poltava on a truck and caught a cold which resulted in tuberculosis. He was very ill, but there was no hospital or medication in Zholtoye.
Period
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Ronia Finkelshtein