Tag #153406 - Interview #101854 (Lidia Lieberman)

My mother’s younger brother Pyotr Ostrovski – he was a military – was packing for his family and his brother Michael’s family to evacuate to Tajikistan where his wife’s relatives lived. Uncle Michael said ‘If we leave and Vera (my mother) and her daughter stay, we shall be responsible for their deaths. Go take them here’. Therefore, the issue of our evacuation was resolved. I remember this day in late August. In the morning grandfather Yakov went to see his older daughter Raisa. I was playing with my friend Rita when uncle Pyotr wearing a hard hat and a military uniform took me by my hand and we went upstairs quickly. My mother had packed two bags: one with winter clothes and another one with summer clothing. She had kept these bags to save some belongings in case of fire emergency. Uncle Pyotr picked the bags, took me by my hand and with my mother we went downstairs, where a truck was waiting for us at the front door. There were other families in the body of the truck. The truck drove us to the harbor where we boarded a ship. In the last minute one family changed their mind and got off the boat. They happened to take our bag with winter clothes by mistake. Later they gave this bag to uncle Pyotr and he took it to our apartment. My mother and I needed those clothes so badly in evacuation. Our boat headed to Novorossiysk, but since there was bombing or something else, we got off either in Nikolaev or Kherson – I can’t remember.