The evacuation of the population from Leningrad is one of the memorable pages of the city's defense during the Great Patriotic War and the blockade. For twenty months (from June 29, 1941 to April 1, 1943) over 1.7 million people left the besieged city. The geography of their settlement is extensive: children's institutions were located both in the nearby Yaroslavl Region and in the distant Novosibirsk Region; educational institutions in 1942 resumed classes in Saratov (LSU), Kyshtym (LGPI named after Herzen), Tashkent (LPI named after Kalinin), etc .; theaters, a philharmonic society, a conservatory, the Lenfilm film studio worked in Perm, Kirov (Vyatka), the cities of Central Asia, and the list of settlements where, according to the decisions of the State Defense Committee (GKO) and the factories and factories, together with workers, numbered more than 50 items.

On June 27, 1941, by decision of the bureau of the city committee and the regional committee of the CPSU (b), the Leningrad city evacuation commission was organized, consisting of 9 people, chaired by B.M. Motyleva. Initially, it was assumed that the commission would deal with the whole range of issues related to the export of the population, institutions, equipment of enterprises, military cargo and other valuables. But the colossal amount of work immediately made significant adjustments. On the same day, June 27, the Leningrad City Executive Committee created a commission (chairman E.T.Fyodorova) to accommodate and evacuate citizens arriving in Leningrad from areas under the threat of occupation (Karelia, the Baltic States, and later the Leningrad region). And on June 28, 1941, the Military Council of the Northern Front appointed the chairman of the Leningrad City Executive Committee P.S. Popkov, in July he headed the Government Evacuation Commission, which was mainly concerned with the removal of industrial enterprises.

In the districts of Leningrad at the end of June, evacuation units began to be created, which in mid-August were reorganized into an evacuation commission.

In early July, the central authorities adopted a number of normative documents "On the procedure for evacuating the population in wartime", "Regulations on the evacuation point" (resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated July 5, 1941), and also approved the registration forms and the procedure for placing evacuees (resolutions of the Council on evacuation at the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR on July 7 and 10, 1941).

The evacuation of the Leningrad population took place in several stages. Children were the first to leave the city. On June 29, 1941, the Leningrad City Executive Committee adopted a decision "On the export of children from Leningrad to the Leningrad and Yaroslavl regions", according to which it was supposed to take out 390 thousand people with schools and childcare facilities. On the same day, 15192 children were sent in ten echelons. At the same time, a significant number of children were supposed to be accommodated in places of their traditional summer vacation - in the south of the Leningrad region, where the fascist troops were rapidly approaching. Therefore, urgent measures had to be taken and about 170 thousand children were brought back to the city.

The evacuation of the adult population began later. On July 7, 1941, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) approved a plan for the export from Leningrad, together with enterprises, of 500 thousand family members of workers and employees. On August 10, the Leningrad City Executive Committee was asked to organize an additional evacuation of 400 thousand people, and on August 13-14 - another 700 thousand. These ambitious plans were not implemented: on August 27, the railway communication between Leningrad and the country was interrupted. In total, according to the City Evacuation Commission, before the start of the land blockade, 488,703 Leningraders and 147,500 residents of the Baltic and Leningrad Region left the city.

In the autumn and winter of 1941, the scale of the evacuation dropped sharply - 104,711 people were transported to the mainland by water and air, including 36,783 from Leningraders.

On January 22, 1942, a mass evacuation began across the ice of Lake Ladoga - the Road of Life. At least 500 thousand of the blockade were supposed to leave. Their journey consisted of several stages: from Leningrad to Lake Ladoga, they were transported mainly by rail (from Finland Station to Borisova Griva station), then by car through Lake Ladoga to evacuation points on the eastern coast (Lavrovo, Kobona, Zhikharevo), and then inland by rail. The rate of evacuation increased steadily. If in January 1942 a little more than 11 thousand people were transported through Ladoga, then in February - about 117.5 thousand, and in March - about 222 thousand people. In total, 554,186 people were evacuated by April 15th.

Evacuation resumed on May 27, 1942. Now, from Borisova Griva station, Leningraders were transported by motor vehicles to Cape Osinovets or Cabotazhnaya pier, changed to water transport and, after disembarking at the Kobono-Karedezhsky port, were transported by trains to Vologda, Yaroslavl, Ivanovo, from where they followed to their destinations. Basically, the evacuation ended in August; in total, over 432 thousand people (including military personnel) were evacuated during this period.

In the future, the evacuation was of a selective nature - orphanages, the sick, the wounded were leaving. After the blockade was broken in February 1943, railway communication with the mainland was restored and trains became the main transport for the evacuees.

In April 1943, the Leningrad City Evacuation Commission summed up its activities: from June 29, 1941 to April 1, 1943, 1,743,129 people were evacuated from Leningrad, including 1,448,338 residents of Leningrad, 147,291 residents of the region, 147,500 residents of the Baltic republics. From April 1 to December 17, 1943, about 20 thousand people left the city. By the decision of the Leningrad City Executive Committee of December 4, 1943, the commission was liquidated.

The date of the beginning of the blockade of Leningrad is called September 8, 1941 - on that day, the land connection of the city with the rest of the country was finally cut off. In fact, the city was cut off from the outside world two weeks earlier, when only the railroad service was interrupted.

Literally from the first days of the Great Patriotic War, a large-scale evacuation was launched in the Soviet Union. From June 1941 to the spring of 1943, more than one and a half million people were removed from Leningrad.

Children were the first to leave the city in June 1941. In those days, the lack of information and the confidence that hostilities should go to enemy territory led to the fact that most of the evacuees were transported to the south of the Leningrad region, where the Germans were rapidly advancing. Soon, the children had to be returned to the city in haste. The evacuation of the population and industrial enterprises turned to the east.

Leningraders in Siberia

The evacuation of the population from Leningrad took place in several stages. From June to the end of August, people left the city by rail. On August 27, railway communication with the country was interrupted. And on September 8, 1941, a blockade closed around Leningrad. After the siege of the city, the scale of the evacuation sharply decreased, and under constant shelling, Leningraders were sent to the mainland only by air and along the waterway of Lake Ladoga (until November, by water, and after - along the ice Road of Life).

For the inhabitants of Leningrad, exhausted from hunger, in distant Siberian cities - Omsk, Novosibirsk, Kemerovo, Barnaul, Tomsk and Krasnoyarsk - evacuation points were hastily created. The cities and villages of Siberia with poorly developed infrastructure were not ready to accept such a number of refugees.

Waiting for a roof over their heads, exhausted people lived for weeks at train stations and stations. The refugees who arrived were settled in clubs, pioneer houses, old multi-tiered barracks, in attics and dugouts, local residents were compacted.

Evacuation to Krasnoyarsk

According to the recollections of the residents of Krasnoyarsk, at the end of September 1942, almost one and a half thousand children arrived from Leningrad. 22 schools, 5 nurseries, 13 kindergartens and 4 orphanages were relocated to the Krasnoyarsk Territory. Immediately after their arrival, all the children were examined by doctors and were horrified at the number of dystrophics among toddlers.

Kindergarten # 26 spent three years in the Siberian evacuation. Photo: Archive photo

The most "difficult" were urgently distributed to hospitals, the rest were sent to the cities and villages of the region. Krasnoyarsk residents took some children to their families directly from the station and adopted them.

Kitten's journey

In October 1942, a whole kindergarten No. 26 was moved to the Karatuz district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. The kids arrived with all the staff - from the manager to the educators, the laundress and the cleaning lady. For the 50 little Leningraders who had arrived, they quickly found 50 pairs of children's boots; local residents brought clothes, books and toys. Gradually, the kindergarten acquired its own farm and began to live as one big family.

Especially for the Leningraders, they allocated a hay area, land for subsidiary farming, bought two horses and four cows. The guests were settled in the building of the local house of pioneers. Once this solid wooden house belonged to the merchant-gold miner Klavdia Kolobova. Leningrad children lived in its spacious and warm rooms for three years, until the blockade was lifted, the war ended and returned to their hometown.

In the summer of 1945, the grown up and stronger children were escorted back to Leningrad by the whole village. The Karatuz children, who knew from the stories of Leningraders that during the siege there were no cats or dogs left in the city, gave their friends a small kitten as a keepsake. The children took care of the tiny creature all the way and safely brought it to Leningrad.

For Anastasia Stepanova and Nikolai Shishkin, the evacuation became fateful. Photo: Archive photo

One of the kindergarten teachers, 20-year-old Anastasia Stepanova, found her destiny in a Siberian village - Junior Sergeant Nikolai Shishkin, Hero of the Soviet Union. Together with her husband, she returned to her hometown and continued to work as a teacher.

BLOCKADE. PART 5. CHILDREN OF LENINGRAD February 17th, 2014

"I saw the boy in the hospital.
Under him, the shell killed his sister and mother.
His arms were torn off to the elbow.
And the boy was five at the time.

He studied music, he tried.
Loved to catch a green round ball ...
And so he lay - and was afraid to groan.
He already knew that crying was ashamed in battle.

I lay quietly on a soldier's bed,
stumps of arms along the body stretching ...
Oh, childish inconceivable stamina!
Damn those who kindle war!

Damn those overseas
behind a bomb carrier builds a bomb carrier,
and waits for unshed children's tears,
and prepares wounds for the children of the world.

Oh, how many of them, legless and armless!
As echoing into the stale crust of the earth,
not like all earthly sounds,
short crutches knock.

And I want, that, without forgiving offense,
wherever people defend the world,
there were little disabled people,
as equals with the bravest people.

Let the veteran, who is old
twelve years old,
when they freeze around
for a lasting peace,
for the happiness of peoples
will raise up the stumps of children's hands.

Let him catch the tortured childhood
those who are preparing war - forever,
so that they have nowhere else to go
from our coming judgment "

Olga Berggolts


Evacuation


Evacuation of the Leningrad orphanage. July 2, 1942


Farewell before evacuation


Children of the besieged city



Leningrad schoolchildren before evacuation. 07/03/1942


During boarding a steamer. 1942


Children evacuated from besieged Leningrad in Kotelnich


Evacuated from the city


Children of the Leningrad orphanage №38


Children from the Leningrad boarding school # 7. 09/21/1941


Children on the streets of Leningrad


Children of the kindergarten of the Oktyabrsky district. St. Dzerzhinsky (now Gorokhovaya). 07-08.1942


Children for a walk. 12.1941


Children from kindergarten №237


Kindergarteners


Children play on one of the streets of Leningrad. 1942


In the shelter


Nursery inmates having lunch in a bomb shelter

"I remember the bread of the blockade years,
Which was given to us in the orphanage.
He was not out of torment - out of our troubles,
And what was not put into it then!

The bread was with chaff, tops and tops,
With bark. Thorny so that it cuts the gums.
Heavy, bitter - with needles, quinoa,
On a holiday, very rarely - just clean.

But the worst hunger was when
We did not receive bread for two or three days.
We understood that war is a disaster
But every day they waited for bread with hope.

We were not hungry for days, but for years.
At least once we dreamed of eating our fill.
Who saw, will never forget
How the kids were dying of hunger "

L. Khamelyanina


In a bomb shelter during an enemy air raid


School lesson in the bomb shelter. 1942


After the end of the shelling. October 1942


Sweeping a street in Leningrad. 1944


Company. 07-08.1942


At the poster. Winter 1941-1942


The sailors of the Baltic Fleet with the girl Lyusya. Her parents died during the blockade. 1943


They were bombed too


Children affected by shelling at the Leningrad State Pediatric Institute


In the ward of the Leningrad State Pediatric Institute, 1942.


In the hospital


The victims of the shelling. Amputated children


In the surgical department of the City Children's Hospital. Dr. Rauchfuss. New Year 1941-1942


Crippled teen

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PART 1. TO PROTECT THE CITY

VOLUNTEERS. ON THE FRONT

On May 7, the editorial office of AiF will hold a marathon in memory of the Voice of Victory in the House of Radio for the sixth time. This year it is dedicated to the fate of children evacuated from the besieged city.

Mass evacuation is a separate page in the history of the blockade. It was carried out in several stages, from June 1941 to November 1943 and affected hundreds of thousands of little Leningraders.

Kids under bombs

The whole country received them. Thus, 122 thousand children and adolescents arrived in Yaroslavl. Such a large number is explained by the fact that this city on its way to the east was the first railway junction and regional center not occupied by the Germans.

The Germans knew about the evacuation and did not spare anyone. A terrible tragedy occurred on July 18, 1941 at the Lychkovo station of the Novgorod region. A train of 12 heating cars arrived there, where there were 2 thousand children and accompanying teachers and doctors. The German plane flew in so suddenly that no one had time to hide. The pilot purposefully dropped about 25 bombs, and an hour later four more appeared ... The Nazis amused themselves by shooting the fleeing kids with machine guns. The exact number of children who died then has not been established until now, but only a few managed to escape.

They were buried in a mass grave along with teachers and nurses. The monument was erected only in 2003. On a granite slab there is a flame of an explosion that threw up a child, and toys at the foot of the monument.

She looked after her

Despite the risk, children continued to be sent inland. Thus, 3.5 thousand children were sheltered by Kyrgyzstan. Most were settled in orphanages on the shores of Lake Issyk-Kul. 800 little Leningraders left without parents were accepted by the Kirghiz into their families.

A unique story is associated with Toktogon Altybasarova, who became the mother of 150 children from besieged Leningrad. In the Great Patriotic War she was only 16, but "for her activity and literacy" the girl was elected secretary of the village council of the village of Kurmenty, where they brought Leningraders exhausted by hunger.

She met them like family. Some could not walk, and the villagers carried their children in their arms. Toktogon distributed everyone to their homes and looked after them as if they were her own. Over time, the younger ones began to call the woman Toktogon-apa, which in Kyrgyz means “mother”. She passed away in 2015, and all this time grateful pupils and their descendants communicated with their mother - they sent letters, came to visit.

Alas, after the war, not all evacuees were able to return home. Leningrad remained a closed city for a long time, and in order to register here and get a job, even the indigenous people needed a call and a lot of information. As a result, many of them settled in Siberia, the Urals, and Kazakhstan. Today, over 11 thousand of those evacuated boys and girls live in 107 cities of Russia and abroad. And although they are outside the city, they are still Leningraders at heart.

Although entry to Leningrad required special passes and permits, after the lifting of the blockade and, especially, after the end of the war, evacuees began to return to the city and many conflict situations began to arise. But first about the evacuation.
The evacuation from Leningrad took place in three stages. The first stage began a couple of weeks after the start of the war and was carried out on trains, in normal long-distance cars, then in boxcars. It is impossible to talk about what rules and procedures were during the evacuation, who was recommended to leave, because the orders were changing all the time. First, it was proposed to the kindergartens to leave Leningrad, and to the parents, whose children did not go to kindergartens, to register them in kindergartens and send them to evacuation. Those groups that went east, to different places, farther or closer from Leningrad, left normally and there, more or less, lived normally. But many were sent literally to meet the enemy. To Novgorod, to Staraya Russa, other cities near Leningrad, where the enemy was rapidly advancing. It is difficult to describe what happened at the same time, how confused the educators were, how they lost their children and ran away themselves, and this happened. But many brought the children back. And immediately an order was issued, the mothers were allowed to go after the children. Many went, found their children, someone did not find, it was different. At this time, in July-August, those who wanted to leave, and who had somewhere to go without evacuation, simply left. But it was difficult, because the trains were given more for evacuation. Enterprises were leaving by the decision of the Moscow and Leningrad authorities. And with enterprises, their service personnel, that is, those working in enterprises and their families. There, too, it was about everyone who was allowed, who was not allowed, how much luggage, how many family members, who could go. We went by rail in wagons. Each train carried several hundred people. This stage of the evacuation ended in September, when Leningrad was surrounded and blockaded. People did not know the truth, they sat in line from the Moscow railway station along Ligovka, with their luggage. They expected that, perhaps, the train would still be allowed to pass. Everything was very secret, no one really knew anything, it was impossible to ask anyone, because it seemed that there were spies around. So this evacuation was interrupted and many who wanted to leave remained in the blockade ring. The second stage began in winter in January, they write that it was on the twenty-fourth of January, but it seems to me that it started earlier. The evacuation was carried out on the ice of Lake Ladoga in cars. But how many a truck could take, ten, fifteen people. We went on trucks, on cars. It was dangerous to go, this line was all under fire. In addition, some cars fell through the ice, people died. January, February, March, April, people were taken out along this single road. The permission to evacuate was very strictly limited and was issued in Smolny in the City Committee of the Party. They were allowed to go only on call, to the families of some high-ranking military personnel, and, of course, by acquaintance. And they broke through there in Smolny by hook or by crook. Of course, a freight car is not a train carriage, it will not take away much.
And the third stage was when navigation through Lake Ladoga was opened. They were already taken out there by barges. The barge accommodated many hundreds of people. And then the government of Leningrad strongly recommended that mothers and relatives take away all the children. Then the elderly and the sick were allowed to go. They were waiting for a new offensive on Leningrad and wanted to take out the ballast - people who could not or did not want to work. And then, already in August, when all the children and old people were taken out, they offered to evacuate all women who want to leave, and directors of enterprises - to let these women go from work, because at that time, in order to quit their jobs, permission from the management was needed. In order to leave Leningrad, in addition to the last stage, it was necessary to make quite a lot of efforts, to collect certificates, obtain permission, check out at Zhakta, etc.
At the end of the summer of 1942, there was a complete division of Leningraders into two parts, evacuated, leaving Leningrad and remaining in the city. All interested women were allowed to leave, regardless of what kind of family relationship they are in. There were no calls to leave. All women were allowed to leave here. And everyone decided this future fate in their own way. It was an independent decision of everyone, to leave or stay. Many left, rescuing their children, or the remnants of their families, or fearing a new winter, a repetition of the first war winter, fearing cold, hunger, fearing the burst of shells and bombs and a very hard life, which came again. It was already heavy, but in winter it would have been even worse. Freelance men could also leave, but there were very few of them in Leningrad. Of course in the evacuation, many were also not sweet. Everyone's life was different and a lot depended on the circumstances of departure. Whether people went with their own enterprise, it was one thing, whether they got a job there at their own enterprise or in another. Whether they were traveling with or without families. Was there a sufficient number of people in these families who could work, feed the families? Where did they go to the city or the village. Many went to the villages and were engaged in rural labor there. At the same time, the situation and life changed for each person. Do not forget that the evacuees lived in Leningrad during the war from a month to a year, and 3-4 years in evacuation. And of course they also somehow adapted. Those who stayed remained by their own personal decision. I can tell about myself. There was a choice. First, my parents showered me with letters: come, come, come. They were in Uzbekistan in the small town of Margelan, there was a silk factory where my father worked. And he wrote that I would have a good job there, so I had somewhere to go. Secondly, my brother agreed to transfer me to Kronstadt, to a military unit as a freelance chemist. I already wrote about this. In Leningrad, however, my rooms were not adapted to housing, glass was broken and there was no suitable stove. It was necessary to settle down somehow if I stayed for the next winter. We didn't know what kind of winter it would be, cold or not. I somehow thought less about food, because I received a work card, at the very least it was possible to live on it, although it was hungry. We were left without electricity, without gas, without sewerage, without running water, with partial transport - there were only a few tram routes. But this is not the main thing. It was possible to compare, of course, life in evacuation and in Leningrad, here and there, how much bread they get, what the temperature in the premises, and so on. But all of them were separated from us by one thing, they lived and worked in an area that was not subjected to shelling and bombing. All the years and months of the war, they did not know about it, being in evacuation. We lived and worked in a zone with shelling, all 24 hours under the beat of the metronome, almost every day under the sound of a siren, when the alarm was announced not in the city, because it could drag on for God knows how long, but in the districts. The metronome began to knock quickly and a voice was heard on the loudspeaker: "The area is under artillery fire, traffic on the streets must be stopped, the population can take refuge." There was nowhere to hide. I worked at the GIPH in a two-story building, when shells hit the building, they exploded, both on the first and second floors, breaking through the roof and ceiling, or two floors. But in the summer of 1942, I still did not know where I would live. Where I later found a job, in a very good place in the GIPH residential building on the top floor under the roof. The house was also fired upon. So all 24 hours I was in the firing zone. But that was not the worst thing.

When it was decided whether to leave or not to leave, for me the most terrible danger was: in the event of an offensive by German troops on Leningrad, it was so as not to fall into the clutches of the Nazis.
We spoke to the Germans, but now it is inconvenient to say to the Germans, say to the Nazis. Because I would have been hanged on the first bitch, as a Jew and as a Komsomol member. And I perfectly understood that. It was the worst thing. And yet. Nevertheless, I firmly decided to stay in Leningrad. I believe that this decision was the only heroic decision during the war. And the people who decided and stayed in Leningrad performed heroic deeds. Why did I stay? There is only one reason. I was kept here by my own conscience. Only my own conscience did not allow me to leave to save myself, to save my own skin, while others would be under shells, in the cold, in hunger, in terrible conditions, to work, providing the Leningrad Front with uniforms and products necessary for the war. This conscience said that I could only leave Leningrad for the front. I also refused to transfer to Kronstadt because it gave little. Here I still worked in my specialty, an unskilled girl could not replace me. Therefore, it was prudent not to get under way. And I decided to stay in besieged Leningrad no matter what.
We must not forget that we, those who remained, worked all the time, while those leaving were busy with documents and the right to leave. Many by hook or by crook sometimes left without any permission across the icy road by agreement with the car drivers, but there weren't many of them. In January-February-March, it was necessary to break through the permit through Smolny, through the Leningrad City Party Committee. At this time, while they pounded the thresholds, we worked. In February, our small organization worked, releasing red streptocide - a medicine for the front. And since March they have been working continuously, first to clean up the city and then at their enterprises. In the third period of departure, in the summer of 1942, we were overwhelmed with work, I talked about this, in the afternoon at enterprises, then in the development of specialties, on Sunday in the gardens, and in August all Sundays on the demolition of wooden houses - the preparation of fuel. In the remaining hours, whoever could, worked in vegetable gardens, equipped premises in their private houses. We had no breath, we worked. Those who were leaving were bothering to leave, and we worked. Throughout the war, the entire blockade, we worked. Despite all the conditions for frost, for alarms, for shells, to which we have adapted to life. We worked. This was the foundation of our life. Work for the front.

This work of Leningraders, in the 42nd, 43rd and beyond, the government noted by the fact that at the end of 1942 a resolution was issued to award Leningraders with a medal for participating in the heroic defense of Leningrad, and residents of Sevastopol, Odessa, Stalingrad were also awarded.
To distinguish the working, the remaining Leningraders from those who left, despite the efforts of the latter, to make it as if there is no difference between us, it was very easy to separate them according to the documents. Firstly, at that time in the passport there was a stamp about work in Leningrad, then stamps were put in the passport, then there was an entry in the work book. It was then impossible to work without a work book, it was not allowed. And the work book recorded where you work, what time, when you were hired, when you were fired, the name of the company and the position. Enterprises sent lists of those who needed to be awarded, who worked in 42-43 years, to the regional executive committees, and there documents on the award were drawn up and medals were issued for almost the entire 43rd year.
The war ended and evacuees began to arrive in Leningrad. Leningrad was still a closed city; it was simply impossible to come to it, register and get a job. I needed a call from Leningrad. When summoned, certificates had to be attached stating that the person had previously lived in Leningrad, had a living space and that this living space was free. In addition, there were still some conditions for coming to Leningrad. For example, it was suggested that those who give obligations to work, it seems, for two years in scarce professions, should be given a challenge. One way or another, by hook or by crook, the former Leningraders returned. Arriving in the city, they behaved very actively, but otherwise it was impossible. The first thing they needed was to recapture their living space. Often the living space of the evacuees was occupied, or liquidated, or given away according to the law, according to orders, or simply populated unauthorizedly, or, more often than not, sold by management administrations to new tenants. Rooms in communal apartments often had to be beaten off by courts. If this area was claimed by two, the former evacuated from Leningrad and who had moved in again, even having received warrants from housing departments according to the law, the court ruled in favor of the former owners who had arrived. One friend of mine lost her husband during the war, he died of hunger, she had two children, and their house was bombed, although her room was intact, she still lost everything. She moved three times and was left homeless. The first time she just moved into an empty room in the apartment where her friends lived, and then twice she received a warrant and twice she was evicted, former tenants came there. In the end, she fenced off a part of the hallway in a communal apartment, leaving only a narrow passage, placed a bed and a bedside table there, and lived there for about a year. She slept on the bed with her daughter and the son slept with relatives. This is how she lived for almost a year, and then she got a room, eerie, in the form of a pencil case, where at the end of one wall there was a window that did not even illuminate the whole room, and she lived like this until she left for another world.
Other reasons for the micro-war were familial. Many needed to get their husbands back, who had already started another family. If in the first case the issue was decided in the direction of the former evacuees, then here it ended in different ways. Whether the men stayed with a new family, or went to old wives. I don’t know which was more. But at this time, for a divorce, it was necessary, in addition to the consent of both parties, to submit an advertisement in the newspaper. Whole pages in the newspapers were filled with these divorce announcements. I don’t know how the courts dealt with it. In addition, the newcomers had to get a job. And this could be done only after registration. And many could get a residence permit only after the courts.
If the newcomers had a whole apartment before the war, there were few of them, but there were large families who lived in separate apartments, or had two or three rooms, then all the same they took several rooms and left them one. In general, there was something to fight for. In addition, of course, I gave a lift to those who left and came with the company and stayed there to work. But all this was sorted out over the course of several post-war years.