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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 October 2020
I remember how the war began…. My grandmother decided we should evacuate.My granny, my grandfather's mother, Izochka [a cousin], and I all went. We went to my grandfather's brother. We went by train. It was a chaos and we took only the bare essentials when we left…. I remember the city [Krasnodar] after it was occupied. Granny had an acquaintance who worked in the “Zagotskot” office. Granny went to her and said, “Valia, you have to help us.” But her husband was already working as a policeman in the Gestapo…. And her husband denounced us nevertheless. We were all summoned to the Gestapo. And we could hardly bring granny [great grandmother] Sonia, as her legs had swollen up. When we got there, they already knew all about us and granny Sonia was sent to a cell. And just as she went in, I remember her shouting: “Vera [Sofiia's grandmother], save Sonia!”
Then they started to torture us. But granny was very clever. She had changed my first and last names. She said that her first husband was a Russian, Geodakov, that they’d had a son Petr, and that I was Petr's daughter. So I was registered as Sofiia Petrovna Geodakova. But she hadn't been able to change her own name. The Germans didn't believe her, though. Granny knew German. And she heard what they were saying: this one is not going to escape our clutches. Locals helped us. They [some acquaintances] went with us to the Gestapo and said we were Russians. But they [the Gestapo] still didn't believe it.
There was an old priest there [at the Gestapo]. They asked him to ask us to say a prayer or something, to prove we were Russian. Otherwise we’d be killed. He asked granny to say the Lord's Prayer. She’d learned it overnight and recited it all to him. Fine. “But why is her name Isaevna?” [asked the Germans at the Gestapo]. The priest answered that there's St. Isaac's Cathedral in Leningrad and she's named after it. Either the priest wanted to help us, or who knows what. So, they sent us home….
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