On the eve of the Victory Day we talk about World War II veterans. This is right. We owe our freedom and life to them. We greatly respect and honor the veterans and we will never forget those veterans who did not live to this day. But today I would like to talk about those people who did not get awards, about women who had to experience all hardships of the war. One of them is my mother. Her family lived in Kiev when the war started and was evacuated to Almaty. My mother does not remember the road, the bombs because she was only three years old. But she remembers a lot about further life during the war and after the war. This is what she has told me.

During the war, there were more evacuated people than the local population. Jobs were very limited. We had to accept any job. It was very cold. During the war, there were severe winters in Almaty as if the nature was testing people. It was possible to buy bread only by using ration cards. A few precious pieces of bread for the whole day. Lost cards could not be restored. Losing the cards could mean death from starvation. We rented an apartment on the Kolkhoznyi Lane, not far from Tashkentskaya Street. Once my mother found bread ration cards on the market and went to look for the cards owners. All people who knew in what poverty our family lived, thought that she was insane. But my mother really found the people who had lost the cards. It turned out to be a big Kazakh family, and cards were for the whole family. They already lost the hope to find the cards. The hostess was so happy that offered part of the cards to my mother, but she refused. Later we had to deal with the same problem. The cards happened to be left in my dress, which had been washed.

They say that people were kinder to each other during the war. The people had the same problems, a common grief. But there were people who were ready to take advantage of people’s misfortunes. When evacuated, people had to leave all their property; they could take only a few of things with them to sell it later and to feed themselves. Once, my mother was trying to sell some fabric for a dress. She was standing at the market for a whole day trying to sell for more money, got very cold. Finally a young couple came up to her, the man was in a military uniform. They bought the fabric. My mother did not check the money, only at home she noticed that it was fake. I will never forget my mother’s tears. She had two starving little children at home. But we lived through everything.

In 1947 we went to Belarus, Vitebsk. The city was in ruins. The ration cards were abolished, but bread was still scarce, there were long queues for it. I remember there were lots of Germans, prisoners of war, in the city. Once, one of them knocked on our door, he asked for bread. The man understood whose house it was, and my mother also saw who was asking but she gave him the bread. I asked why she had done so. My mother thanked God for the fact that she could live to the day when she could share bread with a person who could have killed her if she had met him during the war. That is what kind of people the generation of our parents were!

My mother never blamed or envied anyone. She sang very well. She was singing when she was washing clothes, painting walls, although life was always difficult for her. I think there were many such women.

Nelya Kuzmina