The arrest

The 21st of June was a beautiful day. It was sunny in the morning and the earth shook in the night. We prepared to leave. It was 9 a.m., my boy was harnessing the horses to the carriage, my sister-in-law was tidying up and I was closing the door. As I was about to get into the carriage, the security woman came and gave me a note signed by the head of the Security Service, DARDOR, which said:

“Dear comrade, please come to the Security Service office after lunch at 4 o’clock to receive reports about your husband and grandson”.

The woman left. I was confused. How could I leave?

We all took advice and I decided to stay and find out the outcome. I kept saying, “What a nice man the teacher from Tighina is! He said 10 days and here he is telling us three days”.

I unhitched the horses, prepared some food and couldn’t wait until four o’clock to leave. I left at half past three. It was warm and fine, I was dressed in a street skirt, a silk blouse, a silk handkerchief and white trainers on my feet. When I arrived at the Security Service office, it was a quarter to four. The boss invited me into his office and suggested I sit down.

I said I didn’t have time to sit for long, so they quickly told me about my husband. He smiled sarcastically and asked me who was at home. I told him it was my sister-in-law and the boy. He said, “That’s good, because we have to search you,” and that’s when I realised I was under arrest.

I asked, “Am I under arrest?” and I accidentally fell into the chair next to me. Then he replied in a satisfied tone, “Yes, you are under arrest”. Then he called the woman who had summoned me this morning and told her to strip search me, and he came out. The woman didn’t touch me, except to say that if I had any money I could put it on the table. I had 5 roubles with me, which I put on the table.

After a while the chief came in with a militiaman and ordered me to be taken to the cell. The most horrible moment was when I heard the bolt closing behind me, taking away my freedom.

There were two other women in the cell who had been arrested for speculation and, as there was no bench, they sat on the cement. I remained standing like a pillar of wood, unable to speak or feel anything. Half an hour later, the door opened and my cousin, with whom we had stayed in Tighina, came in. She asked me if she had got me all wrong, and I said yes. She had a blanket, laid it down and we sat down.

We couldn’t talk at all. At 6 o’clock the boss came to us and asked: “Well, how are you feeling?

I barely kept myself from crying and said: “Take care, very well”. At seven o’clock the militiaman brought me the food my boy had given him and said he had brought a pillow, a blanket and an overcoat, but he hadn’t given them to him. He said the boy was still crying loudly, but no one looked at him.

Of course I didn’t sleep a minute all night, I was in a terrible state of mind, almost mad.

At 4 o’clock in the morning the militiaman came and said with great joy: “The war has begun, you will see that you will escape”. Indeed, the sound of German planes could be heard from outside. We waited from moment to moment for someone to come and free us. But there was no movement. At 10 o’clock in the morning “Jmur” comes, this time a little scared too, and says: “Come out after me. We got out. He put me and my cousin in one cart and the other two women in another. With us was a militiaman with a revolver in his hand, and in the other cart was “Jmur”. On the way we saw many German planes. We walked about 20 km under the noise of the planes, which encouraged and cheered us.

We arrived at the iron gates of the prison where my husband had been held for two weeks. There were about 300 of us. The gates opened and we entered the prison yard, which was full of prisoners. There was a great rush and a great hurry.

The formalities began: we were photographed, our faces were sketched, we were fingerprinted, but we were all full of hope that the planes flying overhead would release us. We were in a good mood, even making jokes.

At 10 o’clock in the evening they put us in a room full of women, but so many that there was nowhere to sit but standing, and the air was so thick it made you dizzy. It was indescribable chaos; some were crying, some were arguing, some were swearing.

They all rushed to us to tell us the news. We told them what we knew, but interestingly no one thought that day that we were also human and in need of food.

At 12 o’clock some militiamen came and took us out of the prison, put us in lorries and took us to the railway station. There they put us in dirty goods wagons, gave us two hard black loaves of bread each, and at 5 o’clock we set off, but where to, nobody knew, and we had no one to ask, because they locked us in the wagons. The train seldom stopped except to get water and coal for the engine.

Crying, screaming and fainting was the rule for most of them, but I was frozen without feeling. Our train did not stop at stations except to get water and coal for the engine. It consisted of 90 carriages. During the journey three women died in our carriage, and when we raised the alarm and kicked at the carriage door, the militiamen came to a halt and scolded us for disturbing them. The dead bodies were rotting. We’d take them and throw them in the fields for the birds and animals to eat.

We did this for two weeks. At night the train stopped at a station.

At 5 o’clock in the morning they took us out of the carriages and it was a terrible sight! Hundreds of guards and many wolf dogs. I saw that it said Kazan station. We were in the middle of Russia, on the Volga. They put us on lorries and took us to the city. We were dirty and tired, we hadn’t washed for two weeks because they didn’t even give us enough water to drink. When we got out, we noticed that the prison looked like a church. Later we found out that it was the Cathedral of the Mother of God in Kazan, which used to be the most beautiful and richest cathedral in Russia, and now it has come to house the wretched arrested without guilt.

(Blondina Gobjila – Sufferings of Mother Blondina, a martyr of Siberia, 3rd edition, Ed. Sihăstria Monastery, 2010)