Tag #156089 - Interview #103885 (Malea Veselnitskaya Biography)

In late 1933 our family moved to Kremenchug. It was easier to get a job in an industrial town. My mother’s cousin brother on her mother’s side Yakov worked at the tobacco factory. He was a member of the Party and chairman of a housing cooperative. He helped us to receive a 14 square meter room where we lived: my father, mother, Ruvim, Semyon and I. We stoked the oven with wood: there was no coal. We stored wood in the corridor. My father and brothers fetched water from a pump 4 houses away from our house. They paid 4 kopecks to the owner of the pump and he turned on the tap. We fetched water for washing the floors from a neighbor living across the street from us. She had a pump that took a long while to pump water. Our mother liked to have the room clean. She brushed the floor with a brush until it gained a color of an egg, washed with water and then dried it. There were white rugs on the floor. We had white starched gauze curtains on the windows. Our bed lien was always clean. We had quilted blankets and pillows and mattresses stuffed with down.