Tag #153097 - Interview #94113 (Yevgenia Kozak)

Life was very hard. Mama and I went to work at the factory manufacturing cotton ropes. Mama and I were workers. Father also worked there as a janitor – he could not do hard physical work due to his hernia. My sister went to school. My brother Shloime (we addressed him Semyon and he adopted this name, when obtaining a passport) left and didn’t tell us where he was going.  He just ran away from home with a bag of dried bread and we didn’t hear from him for ten years. We received workers’ cards, but we didn’t get sufficient food and were starving. We lived in a little room in a clay house. Its roof leaked when it rained and we had to sleep in wet beds. Actually we slept on some grass on the floor. However, we didn’t complain. This was a common situation. I suffered from malaria terribly. I had attacks, felt cold, fever and couldn’t wait to leave Uzbekistan.