Samuel Biegun - February 15, 1983
Being Transported to Siberia
Okay now, when the war began, how old were you?
I was eight years old. Seven, eight, seven, eight. It was in '39.
Okay, what happened? What happened when the Germans came into your town?
The Russians came.
The Russians came to your town.
Yes.
Okay, and...
The Russians came a few months later to arrest, you know, we lived in the same block as the uh, my father's brother. It was the same name. So they got arrested--home arrests, you know, and the next day they told us to uh, take just a few things, you know, and said they, they got everything there, so don't worry about it. So--and not to talk to anybody, and just uh, they stayed all night. The next morning you were deported. Took us to the train--freight trains, I didn't know where we're going. We were traveling about three or four weeks, you know. Stop and go. And uh, most of them were filled with old people, women and children. And uh, we got the way to Siberia and uh, they dropped us off in a village about a hundred miles outside the--from the train, so and they told us, "You're own your own." In the middle of the--and uh, it was, it was summertime then--in May or April, May or June. So the people they uh, they felt sorry, you know. Everybody took us in to a house 'til we find our own place.
Why were you transported?
Because uh, they said one of my cousins was a political--they said it was a political, but--so they arrested the...
Wife: About communism.
Yeah, they arrested him and they sent him to Siberia, which he never came back. In a camp, I think, in a camp.
Wife: But they, they deported your family...
And my father...
Wife: ...because of communist.
...and my father's brother's family too.
Wife: Uncles.
They took--they trans...they transported your brother's family.
No, my father's.
Your father's.
Wife: No, uncle.
Because he was the same last name.
Mm-hm. Did you ever see any German soldiers?
No.
How many, uh...
But uh, we were experiencing the bombing in--at the time before the Russians came in. The bomb--we had, had to escape in the uh, in the woods because the bomb fall--they were dropping bombs on us.
The Germans.
The Germans, yeah.
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