Ірина Черкес

"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."

"My father was a doctor. He graduated from the Kharkiv Medical University, also finished graduate school. And when the Soviet authorities came to the city of Lviv, the father was offered to take a chair of head of department. The department of dermatology and venereal diseases. He came here - our whole family came. First we lived in this department, it was Venereal Institute or something like that - and first we lived there. Then we bought an apartment here in Lviv, it was just before the war, we have arrived in the 40th year (1940). Because we have lived here about a year and then bought an apartment and moved here - right at the end of Zelena Street, after we furnished it, made repairs, we made absolutely everything. We moved there, it was just, perhaps, six months before the war. And on June 23, my parents invited guests, friends and so on to celebrate my birthday and this new apartment - in the new order. And the war began."