Saved By War

    Imagine that an innocent fifteen-year-old girl living in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) and she and her family are on a list to be exiled to Siberia. This was my greatgrandmother who lived in a small village in Belarus, a formal Soviet Republic. This happened a few days before the Second World War started, and the situation in the USSR was dangerous because of a new government which had strict rules for everyone. For instance, my family had their own land for farming, but the government said that they must give it to them. In fact, my family wasn't happy about it, so their names were added to a list to be exiled to Siberia. However, shortly after being added to the list, the Second World War began, and the government paused exiling people. World War II and all these circumstances helped my great grandmother survive. She avoided exile, met her husband, and created not just my whole family, but a strong environment in it. 

    

One of the main effects was that great-grandmother survived, and this situation changed her. When she and her family saw their names on the list, they were very scared, but there was nothing they could do about it. Right as they needed to leave, the war started. Consequently, everyone had to think about the war, and the decision to exile disappeared. It was not safe to live in towns and villages because everyone needed to leave their houses and move to a forest and live underground. War is a very dangerous time for anyone. Everyone is your enemy because everyone wants to survive and they don't care how. War is the time when morality is not important to anyone. A few months later after the war started, my great grandmother became a completely different person. She wasn't a little girl anymore who had a carefree life. Instead, her life was very dangerous and difficult. Consequently, she survived not just from almost being exiled, but she also survived in the forest underground where wild animals lived. 

    After the war, she came back to her village where she met her husband who had also returned after the war. All these events built my great grandmother’s character. She was a strong person who always knew what to say. Her husband also had a hard life. He was an orphan, and when the war started, he was only seventeen. He survived the whole war, and he was captured by Nazis three times, but escaped each time. Right after the end of the war, they got married. She worked on the farm while he worked as a truck driver. A few years later, they had their first kid, and she was my grandmother. My grandmother worked on the farm, helping her mom and learning everything from her. Working on the farm from a young age made my grandmother a very strong woman. 

    When my grandmother turned eighteen and graduated from school, she moved to Brest, a large city compared to her village. Brest is one of the seven large cities in Belarus. In Brest, she worked as a transportation coordinator which was a very hard occupation to get for a woman in Soviet Union. After living in Brest for three years, she met my grandfather who worked in a factory as a mechanic. They have lived together for more than fifty years, and I still visit them every time I travel to Belarus. I enjoy spending time with them. 

    When I was a little girl, my grandmother used to tell me stories about how her parents met, what happened in their lives before they met, and how all these circumstances built them. All my family exists because my great grandmother survived the war. This situation had a huge effect on my family because all these circumstances created not just my whole family, but a sense of strength. This is one of my favorite stories from my childhood and I am happy to be part of my strong family.

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