In Soloneshensky District, Altai Territory

There were only a few families in the truck with us. We were brought to a small village where the Medvedev Farm of the Karpov Sovkhoz (a state-owned agricultural estate in the former Soviet Union) of Soloneshensky District was located.

Three families were settled into one small room. Leah Levin with her daughter Sarah and son Mulya, Itl Grach with her daughters Masha and Khaya, my mother Eidl Rykliansky and I, Noah (Naum), shared that room. There was a built-in single-tier plank bed that occupied most of the space. All eight people, adults and children, slept there and stored their belongings under the bed. There was no electricity in the village and we used a kerosene lamp to light the room at night.

Other Jewish families from Ukmerge and other places were brought to the Soloneshensky District as well. Among them were families of Minna Mendelevsky, Sarah Ioffe, the Yanovskies, the Zacks, the Nedelfines, the Paletzes, the Khaet sisters, and many other Jews. Lithuanian families were also brought to that district.

A period of humiliating existence of the exiles had begun. The passports of all adult special settlers were taken away. They received special identity certificates instead. Every adult deportee had to show up once a month on a certain day at the special commandant’s office of the NKVD to register. It was done to make sure that "unreliable elements" were still alive and had not escaped.

We were extremely hungry from the very beginning. The food ration cards we received on arrival for our basic needs did not provide enough food for a household. Our family’s bread ration was 400 grams a day for a working member and 200 grams a day for a dependent. We used young nettle shoots, native sorrel, goosefoot, and even potato peels to supplement our diet. Both children and adults gathered dry twigs and brushwood in the mountain woods to cook food in the stove. Later, special settlers started to exchange their clothes for food (potatoes, eggs, millet and so on).

Once in a while shepherds drove herds of dairy cattle to the Biysk Slaughterhouse and Meat Packing plant from the places located deep in the Altai Mountains over the Chuisky Tract (road) near our village. The shepherds were too lazy to milk the cows and so they allowed the women to milk bellowing cows with overfull udders. Women made curdled milk, sour cream, butter, cottage cheese, cheeses and other dairy from that milk. Mothers and sometimes their children shook bottles of sour cream to get butter. The dairy products, which were produced from cheap (and at times even free), were a great supplement to our meager food supplies. Unfortunately, we did not often have a chance to milk cows from droves of dairy cattle.

Women who were deported from Lithuania demanded that the administration of the special commandant’s office give them the addresses of their husbands. It turned out that the men were sent to Stalin’s camps of Kraslag (Reshot station of Krasnoyarsk Territory). A short time later, correspondence with the prisoners was established. Many of the men, including my father, worked with hardened criminals at tree-felling. Despite not getting enough to eat, women miraculously managed to send food parcels to their husbands, which helped a significant number of prisoners to survive in Stalin’s camps. However, many prisoners from Lithuania died there from back-breaking labor, appalling living conditions, fatal accidents, stress, and exhaustion. Stalin’s persecution system despised and humiliated prisoners, tried to break their willpower to turn them into speechless slaves, and grind them into "camp dust." There was a widespread lawlessness.

When we were brought to the Medvedev Farm, I did not speak Russian at all. Therefore, on September 1, 1941 I went to the first grade of the local school despite graduating from the second grade of Ukmerge Jewish Elementary Secular School where the language of instruction was Yiddish. Leybl Morgenshtern was the director of that Jewish elementary school. As we learned later, many former students of the school ran away from the Germans, traveling deep into the Soviet Union. And almost everybody who escaped survived. That was possible thanks to the fact that the teachers of Ukmerge Jewish Elementary Secular School for the last years of pre-Soviet period told the children the whole truth about German fascism.

In a short time, I learned to speak, read, and write Russian very well. The study was interesting and not very difficult for me. We did not have any notebooks, and we used the paper of old newspapers for writing. We wrote letters between the lines. The students had only a few textbooks per class, and so we had to do our homework on a first-come, first-served basis with a waiting list. All of those difficulties did not deter our great thirst for knowledge.

During the summer, we picked wild berries in the mountain woods, and we liked it very much. We ate this special treat ourselves and brought some home to our mothers. We also gathered mushrooms, and the women made various mushroom dishes.