Tag #155310 - Interview #94498 (Evadiy Rubalskiy)

Our officers told me to stay in the army, but I was tired of this army life and was eager to go home, but nobody waited for me there: my family had perished. Since August 1941 I had no information about my family. I was trying to find out their whereabouts through the evacuation quest agency in Buguruslan. Despite the general mess, this organization worked accurately recording those who were in evacuation, but they replied they had none of my family on their records. This happened, when people evacuated on their own and left no information with official offices. I was hoping they had survived. When Kiev was liberated [6 November 1943] I wrote to our address until I finally received a reply from our neighbors. They informed me that my mama, sister and grandmother decided against evacuation. My grandfather remembered Germans from the time of World War I and believed they might persecute communists, but not Jews. They stayed and followed the commandant’s order to walk to Babi Yar on 29 September 1941. Besides my grandfather, mama and my sister Shiva, who finished the 1st course of the Food Industry College in June 1941, my maternal grandmother Itta Pogrebinskaya, mama’s sister Riva Pogrebinskaya, grandfather Iosif’s sister Hana Leschiner and her husband perished in Babi Yar. In Pavoloch fascists executed all Jews in the number of 2500 people. There is a common grave where those people whose only guilt was that they had been born Jews were buried. There were only 3 survivor girls, the rest of them were shot. There were no Jews left in Pavoloch except the Ruzhinskiye husband and wife. They’ve passed away. There is only a Jewish cemetery and the mass shooting site in the village. There are no living Jews left there.