Tag #155579 - Interview #94720 (Sarra Shylman)

Once we were sitting and talking when I saw deputy director of our college walking by. He noticed me ‘What are you doing here?’ I replied ‘Komsomol has sent me’ to prevent him from asking any further questions. My companions joined me and told him that I was alone and wanted to go to the front. He looked at me ‘Just stand up, change into your civilian clothes and come with me!’ I changed and went with him. He gave me 500 rubles ‘Here, take this! I will put you on a train and you will go find your parents. The front is no place for you!’ He treated me in such father’s manner, and I had suffered so much that this time I burst into tears. He said ‘Sarra, don’t cry! I and other men like me go to the front for you, girls, to stop crying’. He put me on a train. This train took me to Poltava, [about 300 km east of Kiev]. It was destiny. God was always with me. I came to Poltava and kept asking people ‘Do you know where hospital 14-04 is?’ I was looking for my sister. Somebody called a militiaman and said pointing at me ‘A spy’. I was 20, but due to malnutrition I looked 15. They interrogated me in a militia office, but then their chief saw who I was and said ‘Go look for your sister’. I walked out, bought a bagel and kept walking chewing the bagel when I saw a guy I knew. His name was Yasha. He dated a neighbor girl who was my sister’s friend. He was young, but he had very poor sight. I didn’t look myself from hunger. He looked at me, but he didn’t recognize me without his glasses. ‘Syulia, what are you doing here? Your sister is in hospital in Kremenchug’. I went to the railway station immediately and took a train to Kremenchug. This God, God was helping me all the time. On this train I met a women who was going to the hospital in Kremenchug to see her wounded husband. Our train was bombed and we had to wait until they fixed the track after it was ruined with bombs. At last we arrived in Kremenchug [250 km from Kiev]. All of a sudden it began to pour. There were tables with parasols at the railway station. This woman and I stood by a table and waited until morning there. In the morning I went looking for the hospital and a guy told me the way. When I came to the hospital I asked someone to call my sister. She was also looking for me all this time and told everybody that her beauty of a sister had perished. You can imagine how we met! Manager of this hospital doctor Shechtel employed me as a hospital attendant.