Ірина Черкес

"The war started suddenly, as we know. The only thing I remember – if I remember, or I was told so, I do not know - we all went out to the balcony, there were three balconies (in a new flat of Iryna Markivna), and we saw a German aircraft flew over the city of Lviv. Panic began - all left, some departed, and some went and so on. The father was let down by the Institute, the car has not arrived to take us, and we took a small part of belongings that we had, other things, and went on our own. The father’s assistant of venereology went with us, he was Polish. He came out with us of the city of Lviv. So we walked, we walked passing the fields, hid in the grass, in the mud, heading to Zolochiv. We met saboteurs - parachutists from German aircrafts, who were among people, because they wanted to veil. One German officer took me and said: "I will help to carry your daughter." I was 5 years old. But then, he disappeared. He wanted to slip between the people not to be noticed. And so we came to Zolochiv. Some people took us by car, passing by, some on the drays - this way we barely got to Zolochiv. And through Zolochiv some train passed that was going to Kiev, it stopped a bit, and we on the run got into that train. There were mom, me, dad and my nanny."

"After Kiev we came to Kharkiv or by steamship or by something else. In Kharkov we had relatives. And from Kharkiv, my father was appointed, since he was a doctor, as a head of the hospital - evacuation hospital - it was such a surgical hospital, it took the wounded from the battlefield directly to the surgical table, surgical hospital. He was appointed as a chief doctor (or director) of the hospital and was sent there."

"Dad was suggested to move to Ryga and to take the chair of the head of dermatology and venereal diseases department. But as we were in Lviv from the very beginning - my father really liked the city of Lviv (but we all are originally from Kharkiv), he refused. Especially, it was hard for the father to learn Latvian language. He decided to move back to Lviv. And thence from Daugavpils dad wrote a letter to district organizations, local organizations, city organizations, if the flat we had before the war, stayed or not. He was told “yes”. Meanwhile, my father's brother was in Lviv, who came to escape from Tashkent, Tashkent or not, or from Frunzy, in my opinion, he came to the city before us. And he wrote us that the only bomb that flew over Lviv, because Lviv was almost undestroyed, got into our house."