Regina Silver - June 21, 1982
Being Taken to Diktarka
So they used a bus to transport you to this, this camp?
So they want to put me in the train. And I start very much to cry then a higheren, a higher uh, uh, authority walked by and they saw were already tools and men, soldiers fighting with me and they want to push me into the wagons and I didn't want to go so they asked, "What's the problem?" So I, I start to talk of old Russian, of old Polish and I was so upset and crying und they said, "What's the, what's the matter?" So I told them they grabbed my husband in the city and my husband is in jail I just want them to let out my husband and let them send me whenever they want together what am I going to do by myself? Because I had already lost my first child und then I was pregnant with the second. So finally they took us they opened up the wagons and they asked which woman had their men in jail. So they let out a lot of women. They took a truck and they put us in a, in um, it's like in a place in a big building it was like closed up like in a yard and they let us out and start to write names, from everybody names, names, names we were three nights and three days laying on the stones outside--no food, no nothing--they bring out a little, a little water. A, a woman had a baby in front of us on the street there and this und uh, and they come and they asked names, names, names every morning. I just was startled the day come a little truck came in and people run to this and they let out men and they let the family recognize them. So the Tuesday in the morning, was already started, daytime started to come there came a little truck and I ran over and my husband and he came, he came out they didn't know what's happen because he knew I went away to see my father und then he saw me and he saw his younger brother also they caught him on the street. So he was so pale he was so white his ends was so wrinkled like from sweat. They put him in on cabin, maybe fifty people--the cabin was just for five people. There was not a place even to sit not to just to lay. In the, in the night they have to lay like sardines, if one turned over, all of them have to turn over und they were, the sweat was running from them and got to, excuse me, they to go to the bathroom they got a pale in the same room. And if they open up a little window to let out a little bit of fresh air--they just uh, if somebody was tapping on the wall they would close the little window. And he said, my husband saw me and said if I wouldn't have take him out he said he would die. And somebody, all five minutes somebody else fainted and they drag him out in the hall and pour a pale of cold water over him, if you survived, you survived, if not they died like a dog, nobody even see it, nobody even knew it. Und then uh, finally we got uh, together with my husband and they took us in the wagons. Without nothing, we were three weeks in the wagons. Und they, they, um...
Wagons?
In they, in the, in the train wagons, big wagons. Und they took us there and they send us and we went for three weeks on the train. I--on the way I didn't have nothing to change. There was a Polish woman, a Pol... a Polish girl she went with a Jewish like a lover so she--I begged her und we were in the same wagon to borrow me a little dress to wash uh, to change my clothes because I didn't have nothing. Und they send us away, for a, the place was called Diktarka.
It was called what?
Diktarka, it was a place where they mines, like I said before. Und we lived there maybe uh, till the war broke out and then we went away to Turkestan. Und in Turkestan I had my baby.
Wait a minute then you were you there less than 7 months?
No in Diktarka I had my baby and when I went to Turkestan I lost the baby; baby was ten months. I was about, about a year, a year and maybe a year and half in this place.
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