“We survived the siege, betrayal, and a Nazi camp. My mother burned our documents, lied to stay alive, and saved us all.” Anna Winetrub

I was born in Leningrad. When the war began, my father was drafted to the Leningrad front. He was a lieutenant in a mortar battalion. My mother, my older brother (who was three at the time), and I remained in besieged Leningrad. Hunger, cold, bombings. We didn’t die of starvation thanks to my father. Occasionally, he managed to bring us his military rations. At that time, his unit was laying mines in Pushkin, Pavlovsk, and Petrodvorets, towns near the city. At night, he would find a way to visit, leave us food, and return to his unit.

In April 1942, we were evacuated by train to Kazan with my mother’s cousin’s family. But due to bombing along the way, the train was diverted, and we ended up in Rostov-on-Don. When it came time to cross a river, the husband of my mother’s cousin said he’d ferry his family first and come back for us. The bridge was bombed, and he never returned. His wife and children were killed, only he survived.

Not waiting any longer, we followed others fleeing the crossing. People were saying the Nazis were already there. My mother, with two small children, wandered from village to village until we reached the Kushchevsky district, where we could stay for a while. But the village elder, a man named Stayko, turned us in to the Nazis. My mother was interrogated three times. She had the foresight to burn all our documents. She didn’t look Jewish and claimed to be Belarusian. The Nazis seemed to believe her for a time. But because her husband fought in the Soviet army, they threatened to kill her and send us children to Germany to be raised as “real Germans.” My mother told them, “Then kill us all together.” She had no way to flee with two small children.

Out of despair, she once took us to the river, planning to drown us and then herself. But realizing someone was watching her, she changed her mind.

The village elder kept trying to convince the Nazis that we were Jewish, he had a special instinct for it. We were eventually sent to a small camp on the grounds of an old brick factory, along with several Jewish and Romani families. One of the guards would secretly let my mother out to collect food from the fields to feed us.

When Soviet forces approached, the Nazis planned to kill everyone. Someone hid us in a barn and locked it from the outside. Luckily, no children cried. The Nazis searched for us, but the Red Army was already close, and they fled in a rush. When we heard Russian voices, we began shouting, and Soviet soldiers broke the lock and freed us.

We spent the rest of the war living and working on a kolkhoz (collective farm) called “Svetly Put” (Bright Path), where my mother worked. Eventually, we returned to Leningrad. Authorities were reluctant to register us in our home because we had no documents. My mother never told anyone we had been in a Nazi camp, at the time, people believed that if you survived a camp, you must have been a traitor, and that could land you in a Soviet camp instead.

My father narrowly escaped death many times and, like us, miraculously survived. The army had informed him we never reached our evacuation destination and were presumed dead. He lived with that belief for several years. Only after a relative wrote to him saying we were alive — and sent one of my mother’s letters — did he finally believe it, recognizing her handwriting.

After the war, my father had to serve a bit longer in the army. But when he finally returned, our joy was beyond words. We were together, and we were alive.