DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Galina Olkha. Full, unedited interview, 2009 ID BEL046.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4595j ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN TABLE OF CONTENTS ITEM TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION 2 CITATION & RIGHTS 18 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 1/18 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Galina Olkha. Full, unedited interview, 2009 ID BEL046.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4595j ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION —Today is November 18, 2009. We are in Brest, Belarus, meeting with a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. Please introduce yourself: tell us your name. When and where were you born? What do you remember before the beginning of the war, about your family life, parents? How did you end up in the Red Army and how were the years you spent at the front? My name is Galina Isaakovna Olkha. My maiden name is Lina Isaakovna Lifshitz. I was born in a shtetl of Vitebsk Oblast on March 25, 1922. My parents were Jews. My father was Isaac Lifshitz. He worked in an artel. Mother, Ester Lifshitz, was a seamstress. In 1937 we arrived in Vitebsk, because when they began opening collective farms, in 1930, my father was taken: he didn’t want to give up the family cow so he could feed his four children. He did give up his horse. That horse used to be a source of livelihood. The village did not have a railroad, and when people from Leningrad [St. Petersburg] were traveling from Orsha for vacation, my father would go pick them up. So in 1931 they came to us to take our cow. Father wouldn't give it up. I held on to my dad. He was being taken away. The lieutenant, I even remember his last name, he hit me, my father couldn't forgive him for that, that he hit a child . He was taken. For five years, from 1931 to 1936, he was in Solovki [a labor camp on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea —Ed.]. He worked on the construction of the White Sea Canal. When he came home in 1936, people wouldn't let us live in peace. People came all the time demanding one thing or another. Father said, "Let's get to Vitebsk, because we will not be left alone as long as we are here." We left for Vitebsk. There we rented an apartment. At sixteen, I began working as an accountant at the factory KIM. I went to school and worked. The factory manufactured hosiery and textiles. The director of the factory was a Jewish woman, Chanina. When the war began, this is the main thing I remember. I want to tell you. My father was taken to dig trenches to impede the advancing tanks. So, the 29th was a weekend day. Dad was not there; my older sister was married to a KGB operative who supervised a prison in Baranovichi. We were waiting for her; the war started, she was supposed to come. My older brother worked for the railroad. He promised to send us into the rear. But my father received a letter notifying him to appear at the enlistment office on the 8th of the month. On the 8th, the Germans were already in Vitebsk, and we left on the 6th. We got on the train . we boarded the train on July, and on September 22 we arrived at Buguruslan, Chkalov Oblast. I want to tell you a story. On [June] 29, I heard overhead the hum of an airplane. I came outside; we lived in an area next to the Red Church, it was a Polish neighborhood. And I saw that one small plane, one of ours, the Red Army . P-16 . later, when I completed aviation school, I learned what it was. He did not have anything to shoot with. Below him was a German [plane]; it was dropping leaflets. The German pilot started shooting, but our 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 2/18 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Galina Olkha. Full, unedited interview, 2009 ID BEL046.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4595j ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN plane hit him with its wing. Our plane fell . there was a market over there . The German pilot parachuted out and got caught on the church. My mother told me, "Galya, go take a look, maybe you can still buy bread, we have to hurry to get to the train." I ran, but I made sure to avoid the German, so he wouldn't be able to shoot at me. I saw that he got stuck. This was June 29. I couldn’t find any bread, everything was already closed. On my way back, I saw as a military truck emerged from the Polish cemetery, our house's gate was there. The German was sitting between two KGB officers. He saw that I was a Jew. He must have been 3 or 4 meters away from me when he started screaming, "Schwein! Jüdisches Schwein." He [imitated a gun with his fingers and aimed it at me]. His hands were tied with a belt. When they came closer, I stopped. I saw the KGB men and knew not to get involved. The German spit on me. I ran home to my mother, yelling, "Mama! We must leave immediately. We will walk. Germans are almost here." She tells me, "How can we leave? Your father is not home yet, and neither is your sister. We must wait for them." Later my father rushed in and said—this was on the 3rd—that the Germans were killing the Jews. Polish Jews he encountered while digging told him they barely got away because the Germans were killing them. But the border agents wouldn't let them through. Our ones. East Belorussia [Belarus] was liberated in 1939. However, the western region was taken by Germans, and many Polish Jews came to Vitebsk. They worked at our factory. They said that Germans killed and robbed. I started crying to my mother, "Mama, let's leave now." But around the same time, on the 3rd of the month, my sister arrived. She walked for ten days. Her feet were wrapped in towels because she wore down her shoes. She was eight months pregnant. Her husband arranged for her to be driven out of the city along with ten other people. But the driver drove them into the woods and kicked them out. They walked for ten days. Germans were already in Minsk at that time. After she arrived, we left on the 6th. My brother was a railway man and was able to find us a stock car. We were supposed to leave somewhere. But my father received his draft notice, and he said that he couldn't leave or it would look like he was running from the front. So he stayed. We pleaded and begged him, "Papa, come with us, we will go to the front. You can check in there." Later our neighbors told us that our father was betrayed. He was part of the forty mobilized men left, but it wasn't possible to enlist anymore, there was no military presence. They started walking to Vyazma and were captured by the Germans. They said, "Jude"—they immediately saw that he was Jewish—"zurück, zurück, nach Hause." He came, and then he was betrayed. And he perished. And there were just three months left. He had escaped the Germans and joined the partisans. He used to travel to a local village where he knew the village chief—his name was Karpa—he used to visit us, and would frequently stay the night. One time when father came to the village for bread, Karpa was at the house of that villager. The villager warned my father to leave right away because the chief would give him up [to the Germans]. But my father replied, "That can't be. He knows me; 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 3/18 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Galina Olkha. Full, unedited interview, 2009 ID BEL046.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4595j ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN he used to stay over at our house." When Karpa saw my father, he questioned him, "Isaac, why are you here? Where is your Esther, where are your children?" Father replied, "They left." Karpa asked, "And you're still alive?" And my father told him, "Why should I be dead? I'm working, helping . ." And then he and another man, a Russian, left. Our neighbor was walking along toward a hill. She was Russian, but she and my sister were both married to Jews. She saw my father, that they were about to shoot him. My father recognized her and pleaded, "Marusya, tell me what I did to them. Why do they want to kill me?" And she tried [to help], saying, "He has a family, leave him. I will give you my ring." But it was no use. He was shot to death. He died two and half months before the liberation. We never saw him again. All together I had eighteen relatives: father's brothers, mother's relatives. They all died. I met one relative once in the war. He was a teacher in Liozna. He told me the whole family was murdered, everyone. I had an aunt who ran a children's home in Zaozer'ye. We had a very big lake, and in Zaozer'ye there was a children home. When the war began many Jewish children were left without parents.