Tag #152688 - Interview #78004 (Dimitri Kamyshan)

About 15 of us came to the Komsomol committee in Kupiansk at the end of March 1942. Nobody waited for us there. They sent us to Grecheno village [30 km from Kupiansk]. We all stayed in one room, but at least we were given a bowl of pea soup once a day. I became a shoemaker's apprentice. I went to the military registration office asking them to send me to the army. But I was under 16 years old and the chief refused me every time. Once I went there in June 1942 and the chief I knew wasn't there any longer. His replacement was a Jewish man, one of my father's acquaintances, from Kharkov. He asked me how I was, and I burst into tears telling him that my whole family had perished. He told me to come back the following day, and on that day I joined a reserve tank regiment in the village of Grecheno.