Tag #151982 - Interview #93770 (Frida Palanker)

The trip was very long and people were starving to death or dying from diseases. During bombings we were getting off the train to run away. During the stops we had to get some food. We arrived in Kokand, Middle Asia. From there we were sent to a collective farm. We were accommodated in a little hut made of hay mixed with sheep manure. There were ground floors in it. We made plank beds to sleep on them. We had a steel sheet on the floor where we made fire to cook and a tripod to hang the pot over the fire. We put wood and dry branches of saxaul on the metal sheet to start the fire. Acrid smoke was filling the hut. All of us, except brother Mark that was 8 at that time, worked at the collective farm. We got miserable payment for our work that was too little to get sufficient food. We sometimes bought some food or changed our clothes for food at the market, only we hardly had anything to take to the market. Once I met our neighbor from Kiev. She told me that I could work at the collective farm where she worked and that they were paying with flour and cereals for work. It was located in 30 km from the village where we lived. I went there and got a job. They gave flour, cereals and bread as payment for work. Once a week I went back home to bring them food. Mama was very weak, because she left all food that we had to her children. In spring 1942 my little brother starved to death and a month after him my mother died. My mother and my brother were buried in common graves. I didn’t have money to bury them decently.