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My grandfather told his children to evacuate and take their children. Aunt Sarah was evacuating with her plant and she took my mother, my sister and me with her. We went by train to Novotroitskaya village, Krasnodarskiy village (about 1300 km from Kiev). We got a hospitable reception from the locals. They took us to their houses. The only problem was lack of water at the village. There were cement wells in the yards accumulating precipitations. My father found us there – he sent us his military certificate and told us that our grandparents evacuated to Georgievsk (1200 km from Kiev). We moved there, too.
In Georgievsk we rented a room. Our landlords, a married couple, had no children and liked my sister, she was a beautiful baby with blue eyes and blond hair – she was like an angel. They liked the baby very much and my mother allowed them to cuddle her every now and then. The couple told my mother once that they would give my mother money to have my sister, they must have wanted a child desperately. Besides, they may have thought that my sister and I could starve to death. It wasn’t a common thing to “buy” kids during the war, but it was an absurd suggestion of theirs. My mother got very frightened. She paid our landlords one month in advance and arranged for all of us to escape from Georgievsk. We got to the railway station and got a train to Mahachkala from there (1800 km from Kiev). In Mahachkala we waited for our turn to evacuate for a month. Then we boarded a ship - a smaller one) - and then we boarded a bigger ship somewhere in the Caspian Sea. We were allowed to have 5 kilos of baggage with us.
We got off in Krasnovodsk (1300 km from Kiev). There was no water there and every drop was a fortune. In November we got an opportunity to get on railroad platforms to move on. We were passing Samarkand and my mother decided to get off there. We got accommodation at school. We had lice and were terribly dirty. Sarah’s daughter Evgenia and I got typhoid. There were any other diseased people lying on the floor in the gym of the school. There were no medications and only by miracle Evgenia and I recovered.
We lived in Samarkand throughout the war. My mother was an observation inspector at the military registry office where officers’ wives received their bread rations. My mother was to watch that everything was just and fair. We also received some money by my father’s certificate. Aunt Sarah worked at the KINAP (Editor’s note: Kiev cinema equipment plant) that was in evacuation in Samarkand.
In Georgievsk we rented a room. Our landlords, a married couple, had no children and liked my sister, she was a beautiful baby with blue eyes and blond hair – she was like an angel. They liked the baby very much and my mother allowed them to cuddle her every now and then. The couple told my mother once that they would give my mother money to have my sister, they must have wanted a child desperately. Besides, they may have thought that my sister and I could starve to death. It wasn’t a common thing to “buy” kids during the war, but it was an absurd suggestion of theirs. My mother got very frightened. She paid our landlords one month in advance and arranged for all of us to escape from Georgievsk. We got to the railway station and got a train to Mahachkala from there (1800 km from Kiev). In Mahachkala we waited for our turn to evacuate for a month. Then we boarded a ship - a smaller one) - and then we boarded a bigger ship somewhere in the Caspian Sea. We were allowed to have 5 kilos of baggage with us.
We got off in Krasnovodsk (1300 km from Kiev). There was no water there and every drop was a fortune. In November we got an opportunity to get on railroad platforms to move on. We were passing Samarkand and my mother decided to get off there. We got accommodation at school. We had lice and were terribly dirty. Sarah’s daughter Evgenia and I got typhoid. There were any other diseased people lying on the floor in the gym of the school. There were no medications and only by miracle Evgenia and I recovered.
We lived in Samarkand throughout the war. My mother was an observation inspector at the military registry office where officers’ wives received their bread rations. My mother was to watch that everything was just and fair. We also received some money by my father’s certificate. Aunt Sarah worked at the KINAP (Editor’s note: Kiev cinema equipment plant) that was in evacuation in Samarkand.
Period
Location
Samarkand
Uzbekistan
Interview
Evgenia Wainshtock Biography