Bombs Over Minsk: A Jewish Mother’s Race to Save Her Children. Galina Gurevich

I was born in Minsk. There were three children in our family, ages seven, five, and four. When the war began, our father immediately volunteered for the front, leaving our mother alone with us.

From the first days of the war, Minsk was under heavy bombing. On the third day, German troops entered the city. My mother knew all too well how the Nazis treated Jews, so she decided to flee through the forest to the nearest station, where freight trains were still running. With the war underway, these trains were being used to transport people.

She didn’t wait a single day. She tied up what warm clothes she could into a bundle, grabbed us, and ran into the forest. There were already many others hiding there, elderly people, women, children. After a long and difficult journey, we reached a village with a railway station. A freight train stood on the tracks, and we were pushed into a wagon packed so full that there was barely room to breathe. Everyone wanted to escape.

At last, the train moved. I remember feeling desperately hungry. Nearby, there was a family with food: butter, eggs, roasted chicken. We stared at it with longing but never asked. They never offered us even a piece of bread.

Along the way, the train was bombed several times. We would leap out and lie on the ground, then return to the wagon, though not everyone did. Some never got back up.

Whenever the train stopped at a station, my mother would run out to get hot water. One day, she didn’t make it back in time. We were terrified. Strangers managed to push her into the last wagon of our train, and eventually she found us again. We were overjoyed to see her.

There were no comforts on the train. For a toilet, there was only a bucket covered with a rag. We fell ill with dysentery, and at one station we were forced off the train. It took us a long time to reach the city of Stalinabad in Tajikistan.

We were often sick. We were hungry. But thanks to our mother, and to kind people we met along the way, we survived.

This should never happen again. Anywhere.