Selected text
Firagraduated from the Medical Institute in December 1941 and was sent to Troitsk in the Ural, 500 km farther to the East. My mother went with her. My father was too weak to go. I stayed with him. In Troitsk Fira began to work at the children’s home in 8 km from the town and my mother got a job of a teacher at this same children’s home. They lived in a small room in the children’s home.
I was a patriot. This was how we were raised at school. We heard only communist propaganda on the radio and at meetings: there were songs, poems and speeches propagating devotion to the communist ideas. Everything we read in newspapers was about patriotism. I felt depressed that nobody in our family was at the front. I went to the military office to volunteer to the front. I was full of enthusiasm and didn’t think about my parents at that moment. There was an older man at the reception. He asked me how old I was. I added one year and said that I was 16. He looked at me and told me to go home to grow a little older and added that he hoped that I wouldn’t have to go to the front.
When my father got better we went to Troitsk. In Troitsk I went to work as a nurse at the children’s home. We got a plot of land there and grew potatoes. My mother grew up in a village and was good at gardening. We went to the wood to pick up wild strawberries and sorrel. We received coupons for flour and my mother made pies stuffed with sorrel, wild strawberries and beetroot. They seemed delicious to us. The Chairman of Starokonstantinov town council was in evacuation in Verkhneuralsk, Cheliabinsk region. She was my parents’ friend and her husband was director of leather storage in Verkhneuralsk. He knew my father and offered him a job. My father went alone. My sister was sent to work - she got a job assignment in Kholmogory Arkhangelsk region and my mother and I moved to my father. We got accommodation with very nice people. People in Verkhneuralsk didn’t know anything about Jews. They heard the word, but they believed that Jews were monsters with horns. When their children didn’t behave themselves their parents scared them “A Jew will kidnap you”. My mother told our landlady that we were Jews and she was surprised “Really? But you look like we do”. She treated us nicely and allowed us to grow vegetables in her kitchen garden. It was very kind of her, because land was very precious in this area. We planted cucumbers and tomatoes. Cucumbers grew all right, but tomatoes didn’t have enough time to get ripe. Summer lasted about two months. We put tomatoes in winter boots to get them ripe. The summer was hot and short: it lasted 1.50-2 months. Summer ended abruptly and it began cold suddenly. Frosts came at the beginning of September lasting to the middle of May the temperature dropped to minus fifty.
We were starving. We had planted potatoes, but it got rotten. We picked it and boiled. It smelled and tasted terrible. We received bread every now and then, and sometimes we were given dough instead of bread. My mother baked flat bread on the stove. We stoked the stove with pressed dung. I received 30 grams of bread at school. It was a small cube, as small as a postage stamp. Later we bought a small piece of frozen milk at the market. Once a local hunter gave us the insides of a partridge. It was a feast that I remembered!
I was a patriot. This was how we were raised at school. We heard only communist propaganda on the radio and at meetings: there were songs, poems and speeches propagating devotion to the communist ideas. Everything we read in newspapers was about patriotism. I felt depressed that nobody in our family was at the front. I went to the military office to volunteer to the front. I was full of enthusiasm and didn’t think about my parents at that moment. There was an older man at the reception. He asked me how old I was. I added one year and said that I was 16. He looked at me and told me to go home to grow a little older and added that he hoped that I wouldn’t have to go to the front.
When my father got better we went to Troitsk. In Troitsk I went to work as a nurse at the children’s home. We got a plot of land there and grew potatoes. My mother grew up in a village and was good at gardening. We went to the wood to pick up wild strawberries and sorrel. We received coupons for flour and my mother made pies stuffed with sorrel, wild strawberries and beetroot. They seemed delicious to us. The Chairman of Starokonstantinov town council was in evacuation in Verkhneuralsk, Cheliabinsk region. She was my parents’ friend and her husband was director of leather storage in Verkhneuralsk. He knew my father and offered him a job. My father went alone. My sister was sent to work - she got a job assignment in Kholmogory Arkhangelsk region and my mother and I moved to my father. We got accommodation with very nice people. People in Verkhneuralsk didn’t know anything about Jews. They heard the word, but they believed that Jews were monsters with horns. When their children didn’t behave themselves their parents scared them “A Jew will kidnap you”. My mother told our landlady that we were Jews and she was surprised “Really? But you look like we do”. She treated us nicely and allowed us to grow vegetables in her kitchen garden. It was very kind of her, because land was very precious in this area. We planted cucumbers and tomatoes. Cucumbers grew all right, but tomatoes didn’t have enough time to get ripe. Summer lasted about two months. We put tomatoes in winter boots to get them ripe. The summer was hot and short: it lasted 1.50-2 months. Summer ended abruptly and it began cold suddenly. Frosts came at the beginning of September lasting to the middle of May the temperature dropped to minus fifty.
We were starving. We had planted potatoes, but it got rotten. We picked it and boiled. It smelled and tasted terrible. We received bread every now and then, and sometimes we were given dough instead of bread. My mother baked flat bread on the stove. We stoked the stove with pressed dung. I received 30 grams of bread at school. It was a small cube, as small as a postage stamp. Later we bought a small piece of frozen milk at the market. Once a local hunter gave us the insides of a partridge. It was a feast that I remembered!
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Faina Volper Biography