Hana and Her Children Evacuate from Kiev to Kazakhstan

Fleeing Kiev one month before the city fell to the Nazis on 19 September 1941, Hana Yaroker, her two year old son Michail and seven year old daughter Hasia become part of the Soviet evacuation to central Asia. Traveling by train to the Black Sea port at Novorissiysk, the Yaroker family has only the clothes on their backs and the few possessions they carry.

During the journey, two year old Michail becomes gravely ill. Hana barters her fur coat for food — a chick — with which to save her son from starvation.

On the train Hana met and befriended Lea Wiener, a young woman traveling alone. Unexpectedly meeting her brother at a train stop, Lea says goodby to Hana and she and her brother depart. They eventually immigrate to America. (Lea and Hana will corresponded after the war. In 1974, Lea becomes an important figure in the Yaroker family’s first few months in America.)

The Battle of the Caucasus continues and the Nazis advance on the Eastern Front. Boarding the last military ship, Hana and her children evacuate Novorissiysk in advance of the Nazi’s 1942 attack. Traveling by train, they escape to Tashkent in Uzbekistan, Alma-Ata and finally Frunze in Kazakhstan.

Living in Frunze, a small village in the Almaty province of south-eastern Kazakhstan, Hana works on a kolkhoz, a communal farm, for the duration of the war. In 1944, the family begins the return trip to Kiev.

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Soviet Evacuation Route

The family’s evacuation route has been reconstructed from family documents and memories and historical books. The map below shows the route that we believe the family took in the years between 1941 and 1944.