Cherkashin Aleksandr Michailovich

Aleksandr Mikhailovich with volunteer Szonja

Interviewers: Szonja (Hungary), Olga (Ukraine)

This special interview was taken with Cherkashin Aleksandr Michailovich , who shared his mother’s memories of the holocaust with us. He was born in 1945 in a labour camp and doesn't remember this time, but he remembers how it was it to grow up among secrets, and how was it to believe in the ideas of the upcoming regimes and then to see them fall.

Can you tell me anything about your mother?

My mother was a rather small, but a very strong and quiet woman who worked really hard in her entire life. I always respected her bravery and her strength as she managed to survive the emotionally and physically unbearable circumstances of the concentration camp, and could bring up a child on her own in such a world where single mothers had to cope with a lot of difficulties and prejudice. I have been always thinking about that she could have had a much better life if she had come back from Germany without a child.

What do you know about her childhood?

She was the sixth child in her family; there were 16 years distance between her and her oldest brother. As she lost her parents really early she lived with her oldest brother and his family, taking care of his 6 children as a nurse.

What happened when the war started?

My mother was 17 years old when the evacuation started. Her brother, who was a head of a factory here in Konstantinovka had to leave the town with his family to Ruvan region. My mother stayed in Konstantinovka to take care of his house.

As the Germans arrived to the region they started to kill communists systematically. My mother was saved by the head of the community, so she wasn’t killed, but she was deported to Donetsk. She managed to escape from there, but as she had no place to go she just came back to Konstantinovka from where she was taken to a camp in the town called Wildao in Germany.

What was her job in the concentration camp?

She worked in the kitchen, and cooked for the others who lived in this camp and worked in a factory that produced wagons for the deportation. Sometimes she had to work in the fields too, but despite the fact that she had a different job from the others’ she lived in the same barrack as they did.

Did your mother mention any kind of punishment that Germans used?

Yes, she said that those who got into arguments or conflicts with Germans in the camp were locked at the basement at night which was full of rats.

Were you born in this camp in Germany?

Yes, I was born there on the 15th of January 1945. My mother said that I wasn’t her first child; as I understood, her first son died just after he was born, but I’m not sure, she never wanted to speak about it.

What happened when the Russian army arrived?

When the Russians came, they ordered the mothers to leave their children in the barracks. My mother also had to do this, but I cried so much that she came back and took me with her.

Those women who had a child went through a special procedure where they had to prove that their children’s father was not German, otherwise they were killed. My mother told the Soviet soldiers that she didn’t know who my father was, but this wasn't enough. Fortunately she managed to find a Jewish man from the camp who agreed to testify that he was my father to save her life, so I got his surname, and then my mother was allowed to return to Konstantinovka with me.

What happened after she arrived at home?

She went to her brother’s house, who feared that her staying there could bring bad luck for his family, and feared of being deported again, so he asked her to leave.

Fortunately the head of the communists helped her and found her a job at the windmill in a village called Brestanol, which lies close to Konstantinovka, despite the fact that it was risky for him. My mother wasn't payed for her job, but got a small room to live and enough food to survive the hard hunger period of 1947-48.

Her brother and his son sometimes visited her, but nobody in the village knew that they were relatives.

Did the citizens of the village know that you were born in Germany?

No, my mother was afraid that it could cause problems for me later, so she illegally arranged fake documents for me to prove that I was born in Konstantinovka. Despite this fact there were some rumors about us in the village, sometimes my schoolmates called me "German", but I never understood the reason why.

So you didn’t even know that you were born in Germany?

No, I only got to know it when reparations started after the dissolution of the USSR. I had to prove to the KGB that I was born in Germany. Fortunately one of my friends could help with this and found my documents, among others, in German archives.

Did anything changed in your life with this?

As there wasn’t any registration of the marriage of my mother and my "father" (the Jewish man who saved her life) I should have changed my surname, but as I have a wife and children, who have my name too, I didn’t have to change it as last.

When do you celebrate your birthday?

I celebrate it on the 15th ofJanuary, that is the day when I was really born.

What was your job?

I started as a simple electricity technologist at a company where I became the chief engineer at the end; unfortunately I was quickly fired when they came to know that I have cancer.

What do you think was the best period of the last 60 years?

I think the period of Khrushchev was the best time for the people, when they could truly believe in the values and ideas of the party, and they felt safe in a well-working system. In this period we could truly trust the regime, I was even one of the leaders of the party. In the Brezhnev period that followed, I felt that I couldn't believe in any regimes anymore.

How could you summarize your life?

I’ve got a wife, we are married since 1965,  we have two daughters, 45 and 31 years old, and some grandchildren. I think I had done everything in this life what I had to do: I have a beautiful family, I achieved appropriate circumstances to bring up my children, and live a pure life with my family; I always chose the harder: following my basic values in my life in a legal way, as my mother did .