First fled Leonid in front of the Nazis, then in front of the Russians – Diepresse.com
Leonid did not want to leave his hometown Kharkiw, but after two weeks under Russian shot he and his wife took two bags and went to the train station. « People slept on the floor. I don’t know how we got into this wagon. »
From my childhood I only remember the air -raid shelter. » Leonid’s view is on the ground, his hands rest on my knees.
He was born in 1937 in the eastern Ukrainian city of Charkiw. This is the year in which the NKVD, the Interior Ministry of the USSR, shot hundreds of Ukrainian intellectuals in the sand arm, a forest area in Karelia. The reason: « Anti -Soviet activities » and « terrorist attitude ».
At the same time, factories were opened in Charkiw, tram lines were extended, overhead line buses were introduced and residential complexes were built. So also in « Nowyi byt », where Leonid’s father received a two -room apartment in a newly built five -story building a year before the birth of his son. As a loyal communist.
He owes his last name to the city of Brody in the LVIV area, from which his Jewish grandparents came. In the 1920s they moved to Charkiw, the capital of the Ukrainian SSR.
Leonid’s father became deputy department head in the « Gorkom », the local committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine. Leonid almost never saw him. Every morning he cooked semolina porridge for breakfast, went to work and came back at midnight. Leonids Mama Esther worked as an accountant.
« Everything was fine with us. I still have photos of it, » he says.
His father reported to the fight
When the Nazis bombed Charkiw, Leonid and adults ran into the air -raid shelter in the courtyard. « I was only four years old, but I was not afraid. My family was there. » But on October 25, 1941, the German Army Group Süd marched under Feldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt.
Leonid’s father volunteered to fight the Nazis, although he had an exemption from military service from « Gorkom ». He was a captain of the mining battalion of the 56th army. The first to get a medal for bravery. Before leaving the city, Jakiw accompanied his wife, his parents -in -law and his son. « Jews, children of communists, had to leave Charkiw, » says Leonid, « we were evacuated in November 1941. »
