Vladislav Kabrda

"They used to pull out tons of anchovies from the sea. The head officer, named Harkoma, allowed the fishing boats to sell their fish in the dockside. They cost five rubles for a bucket. That was almost for free, although it was quite a lot of money to them. You would have to collect two buckets of anchovies - they were pretty heavy- and take them home. Then we would salt them and fry them. The women used to make great lunches with them. It is a meat after all. And that’s how we survived. A lot of people came from the Ukraine too...They all were eating the anchovies. It was in the spring, and we had nothing to eat. Only these anchovies saved us. Another way to eat them was to grind them and mix them with some acorns. We would clean and cook them first, and then dry them and shred them. We would make something like breadcrumbs out of them, which we combined with the anchovies to make hamburgers."

"After the end of the war some cars arrived to the town. Some went to the West, some went to the East. We sat in those headed to the East and went home. Here. And just as we arrived home, the hearings with the KGB agents started. We were guilty for coming back from Germany. See, that’s how it used to be before. I still have my ID book where is written ´Came from the Germany.´"

"We wanted to go to Czechoslovakia so badly. We already had all necessary documents prepared, but then suddenly some lieutenant - I think his name was Volkov - came and told us: ´You will go, but to the other side. You go to Siberia now. They burned all our documents then and all our excitement was gone. That’s how it was. But we all wanted to leave, we really have. We have all the papers ready. He probably was a KGB agent, or else I don’t know."

"Some people ran away to America. But it wasn’t just like that. It was no easy at all. They put the people on some boat and intended to take them somewhere to ´The new land´ or as they said to ´The land of Franz Joseph.´ and as they were sailing through the North Sea, the people managed to capture the crew and to lock them up. And since there were some smart people among them - one person knew how to sail on the sea, some other person knew the engines - they made it finally to Norway. They have begged for food and some water and some fuel there. Guided by somebody called Kohout they headed to America.”

"There were big Mariners warehouses on the place we stayed. Even these days they are still there. They kept their mines and torpedoes inside; they had unbelievable things in there. They have accommodated the Marines at our school. And we, the student, had to go to another school in Cindalina place. And the other day the strong north wind started to blow and brought the snow storm. We carried our school bags in our hands so we wanted to tie them up to our bodies. We went to school in the morning dressed up lightly, but when we left the school we were freezing. We tried to tie the school bags on our backs using the string and a pocket knife. As I was cutting the string my knife got loose and bang! That’s how I lost my eye. Who is guilty for that? The war perhaps. It happened in 1941 at the beginning of the war. The war started in June and this accident happened in September or October."