Tag #151219 - Interview #77979 (mark golub)

The distillery where my mother was working was not evacuating, and it was difficult to go on one's own because of the panic and the crowds of people at the stations. Therefore, it was decided that my mother, Riva, Lev and I would go to Kharkov with the employees of Kiev's Military Hospital as my grandmother's sister Genia and her husband Yakov Schwartz' relatives. We went by boat at the beginning of July. My mother and Riva decided that we would get off in Kremenchug, a place not too far from Kharkov. I remember this trip. We had a lot of luggage. We reached Kobeliaki Station by train and took another train to Poltava. It was a real gypsy camp near the Poltava Station. There were thousands of evacuated people. It was next to impossible to get on the train. At night we were in a bombing, but we escaped all right. Riva found a car and arranged for the driver to take us to Kharkov. Riva left for Moscow from Kharkov. We went to my mother's sister Ruzia. In her two-room apartment there was Ruzia, her husband, their son, my grandmother, my mother, my brother and I, the mother of Ruzia's husband, his sister and her son, his brother's wife and their two children. There were 13 of us in all.

We stayed there until the middle of September when the evacuation from Kharkov began. We were thinking again about how to leave. Ruzia's husband Alexandr was working at a design institute and was supposed to leave for Stalinsk in the Kemerovo region or to Orsk, in the Chkalov region where they had their offices. He was only allowed to take my grandmother Enia and my brother Lev with them. My mother and I left with the Kiev Military Hospital, with which we were listed as members of Yakov Schwartz' family. Our trip across the country lasted almost a month, until we reached Tomsk. We found an apartment in Tomsk and my mother started looking for information about Ruzia's family. We found out that they were in Orsk. At the beginning of November Yakov bought us tickets to Orsk and my mother and I went on this trip.