First months in Kachen

Translation of the transcript:

When you were brought to Kachen, where were the deportees housed?

Here and there. There were empty houses there, so some went there, and others went to apartments where kolkhoz workers were already living.

And where were you and your father housed?

We were given a two-family house, which was very small, but we lived there with another family.

There was only one room?

Yes, with a kitchen. Then, one or two years later, we bought a house with my father. It was big.

How did you manage to buy it? Where did you get the money?

My father worked as a machinist where they threshed grain, it was the MTS company. He got paid with grain and a little bit of money, so we bought it with that.

So the skills he acquired before you were deported were useful to him during his deportation?

Yes.

You arrived in the spring, did he work as a machinist straight away, starting in the summer? Or was it after that?

Not really. We were brought in the spring, and it was in the fall that he got the job.

And how did he get the job? Did he himself say that he could do that?

Yes.

And that summer, where did you work?

He worked a little as a foreman, a carpenter. I didn't have a job, given my age.

What did you do that summer?

I went fishing.

By yourself or with the other kids?

Alone and with the other children.

Who were these children? Were they Lithuanians, Russians?

They were from all over.