Tag #155493 - Interview #94697 (Larisa SHYHMAN)

When Maya recovered we were taken to a German settlement [20], in the Volga region. There was a Nemtsepovolzhskiy district in Saratov region with German and Ukrainian population. Those Ukrainian migrants moved to the Volga area during the reign of Yekaterina [21] or Soviet authorities deported some [22], as unreliable residents. The gave their villages names of Ukrainian towns: Kievka, Poltavka, Kharkovka…. So we lived in Kharkovka. Here was ‘ded Vasyl’ [‘ded’ literally means ‘old man’ in Russian]. When he saw us he said at once: ‘I am taking this family with me’. So it’s only in his home we recovered our feelings. I went to deliver water to fields. I had a strange horse looking like a camel. I also made haystacks and worked on a combine unit. All kinds of work I did. Ded Vasyl liked me a lot. I used to read him the Bible. He couldn’t read. It was a Bible or Testament, a huge book, I don’t remember exactly. He loved it when I was at home… He always sent me milk or something else. So we were all friends. My mother worked in a vegetable garden. Maya was already ill, but she went to kindergarten anyway.