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Our destination was Dschimbek in Northern Kazakhstan, in the steppe, 200 kilometers from Stalingrad, and we reached it. In Northern Kazakhstan there are settlements every 50 kilometers. We mostly lived on fruit we stole. Our feet were sore because our shoes were completely worn-out. Allegedly Stalin had ordered the trucks that returned empty from the front to pick up refugees, but they ignored that. I sat down on the side of the road with a bottle of vodka and that had a better effect than Stalin’s order.
Dschimbek was an oriental city, a junction between North and South, and there – sometimes real life is more interesting than a film - I met a friend. I wanted to head further north because I thought the heat in the South would cause us difficulties. That’s why we came to Sverdlovsk [today Ekaterinburg], made enquiries about the university and learned that a professor was teaching there, who had been in Stalingrad with us. He was very concerned about us and even put us up in his place in the beginning.
There was a faculty of chemistry in Sverdlovsk, but we had already taken so many exams in mechanical engineering that we decided to stick with it. That was in fall 1942. We completed our period of practical training in a motorcycle factory in the small town of Irbit. We worked twelve hours a day, just like the laborers there. There were no real roads in this little town, just tracks like those we had in the poorest parts of Eastern Poland. We were accommodated by different families. We had hardly any food, or, to be more precise, we were starving.
Dschimbek was an oriental city, a junction between North and South, and there – sometimes real life is more interesting than a film - I met a friend. I wanted to head further north because I thought the heat in the South would cause us difficulties. That’s why we came to Sverdlovsk [today Ekaterinburg], made enquiries about the university and learned that a professor was teaching there, who had been in Stalingrad with us. He was very concerned about us and even put us up in his place in the beginning.
There was a faculty of chemistry in Sverdlovsk, but we had already taken so many exams in mechanical engineering that we decided to stick with it. That was in fall 1942. We completed our period of practical training in a motorcycle factory in the small town of Irbit. We worked twelve hours a day, just like the laborers there. There were no real roads in this little town, just tracks like those we had in the poorest parts of Eastern Poland. We were accommodated by different families. We had hardly any food, or, to be more precise, we were starving.
Period
Year
1942
Location
Ekaterinburg
Russia
Interview
Emilia Ratz