Jaroslav Domanskij

"I was crossing a bridge called the Friendship Bridge. I totally knew I shouldn't go there. Below that bridge was the Sajmen Canal, which connects the Finnish hinterland with the Gulf of Finland. At that time, I did not know and did not understand many things. There were no prohibition signs, I was young, so I went there. Now I know what it was about. Even though the bridge was high enough, if I jumped off it into a ship that did not belong to Finland, but to Norway or West Germany, for example, no one would get me off it because I would be in a neutral territory. If it was a Finnish ship, they would get me, because Finland was returning refugees from Russia. If you wanted to escape, you had to get to Sweden or Norway as soon as possible. I didn't think about it then, I was just trying to see what would happen if I walked over that bridge. When I was right in the middle, a small jeep arrived. The border guards who belonged to the KGB took me to their hut. There they began to ask me interesting questions on various topics. That's when I learnt what cross-examination was."

"I knew the adult world was hiding something. I felt it quite strongly. As a child, I thought, for example, that the Great Patriotic War was not at all. I thought they made it up for us to raise us in the right way. Only then from one experience was I convinced that there really was a war."