A Hard Road to Survival. Viktor Blekh

In 1941, as the Nazis approached Dnipropetrovsk, my parents, along with my grandparents, were forced to flee eastward on one of the last trains heading to the Ural Mountains. The journey was terrifying. German aircrafts repeatedly bombed the trains. Every time, passengers had to jump out and run into nearby forests or ravines to hide.

My mother was pregnant with me, and my grandfather was gravely ill. During one air raid, a bomb hit their train. The car carrying my family and the one next to it caught fire. All of their belongings were destroyed. They spent nearly two weeks stranded at a nearby station before finally getting onto another train.

It took them two and a half months to reach the town of Pervouralsk in the Urals. We were placed in a half-destroyed, unheated barrack. On October 22, 1941, my mother gave birth to me, a tiny, premature baby. She had no milk, so I was fed whatever food they could find. It was a time of hunger. For as long as I can remember, I was always hungry.,

As I got older, I would sneak into gardens with the other boys to steal onions and carrots. There were German POWs living in that town, and I still remember receiving my very first candy at age four, handed to me through barbed wire by a disabled German soldier.

Sometimes my father took me with him to work just so I could share the food he received there. From chronic hunger, I remained a small and sickly child. Things improved when I was finally able to attend preschool.

I’ve often told my grandchildren about my childhood during the war. But they can’t quite grasp how we survived.

And sometimes, I can’t either.