Tag #152546 - Interview #101417 (Sarah Kaplan)

I didn’t want Shunia to go to the front. I even hid him in the attic of the house for some time. But he was recruited, and in September 1941 he left for the front. I got a job at a military unit in Poltava. I shaved soldiers and cut their hair. We got accommodation with a Tatar family. Our landlady, Tamila, had six children and there were three of us – nine hungry human beings. Tamila’s husband, an agricultural engineer, perished at the front. We had no food. There were only two cards for the people who worked. The rest were cards for the children, who were dependants, for 100 grams of bread per day, which wasn’t always available. The children went to kindergarten, but they came back home hungry. We lived in the outskirts of Kazan. There were collective farm fields nearby. Tamila and I went to the field at night when nobody could see us. We found potatoes, carrots and sugar beets. We baked these vegetables to feed the children. Our first winter of the war passed. In the fall of 1942 I received my husband’s death notification. I was grieving and cried a lot, but I knew I had to be strong for the sake of my son.