Tag #151387 - Interview #78122 (Simon Gonopolskiy)

My father was in a fighting battalion [12] that fought against German forces that landed in the rear. When the siege of Odessa began my father told my mother, 'Rosa, the situation is serious. I will join the army and you need to leave town'. All I know is that my father was in the Primorskaya army defending Odessa. Sometimes he came home by tram from the frontline. Trams commuted from Kulikovo Polie [a square near the railway station] to the frontline where my father's military unit was deployed. I remember him taking me to have a meal in their military canteen twice: we didn't have enough food at home. On 28th September we got tickets enabling us to board a ship. It was difficult to get to the port. My father took us there along with his sister Hanna and her son Ilia on a military truck. This took place at the beginning of October, two weeks before Soviet troops left Odessa. We never saw my father again. Later our neighbors said that he came to bring them bread several times.