Tag #151433 - Interview #78157 (Rosa Gershenovich)

I was desperately lonely. I didn't know where my husband was. He wrote my mother and I wrote my mother and we found each other in this way. He wrote me in Uzbekistan. He was at the front. In the beginning he was a soldier, and then a sergeant. He couldn't support me financially. Only officers could support their families by sending them special certificates on the basis of which military registration offices paid allowances to the families. Military men of lower ranks didn't have this possibility.

Namangan was a big Uzbek town. There were very rich and full markets there. I didn't have money to buy anything. I could only afford a bun that cost 10 rubles. I had to make this bun last for a whole day. I received 400 grams of brown bread and that was the only other food I had for a day. There were many Jews in evacuation in Namangan, but I didn't know any of them. I don't know whether there were any Jewish activities. I was happy to receive letters from my family and husband. My husband went across Russia, Ukraine, Poland and Czechoslovakia during the war. I was very happy that he survived. At the beginning of 1945 he was wounded and stayed in hospital. He got better there and was demobilized.