Ірина Черкес

"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."

"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."