Masliynaya Natalia Karpovna

Interviewers: Natascha (Ukraine), Tim (Germany)

At her home in the living room, August 8^th 2010

Life before World War 2 (WW2)

Natalia Karpovna Masliynaya was born in 1924 in Kiev Region. Though, she has never been to Kiev. She had a brother and 5 older sisters. She had 3 more sisters but they died during the famine at the beginning of the 1930s at the age of twenty, eight and six years. As her brothers and sisters lived already somewhere else, she shared her home alone with her father and her mother. Her parents worked as farmers. She has attended the local school for 8 years. Afterwards she became a student at the pedagogical branch of the technological school to become a teacher. She joined different socialist youth organizations like the pioneers and she was Komsomolska (member of the communist youth organisation) in the technical school. One main aim was to help people, for example in the kindergarten and the primary school. In her village everybody spoke Ukrainian language. At the age of seven she started to learn Russian at school. She had been taught German for 5 years.

None of her relatives took part in the Spanish war or the Russia- Finnish war. Nevertheless her father was fighting during the First WW, according to what she was told by him. There were no Jews in her village.

Famine 1932/33

At the beginning of the 1930, the Kolkhoz (collective farms) were established in the Soviet Union. Authorities collected seeds and domestic animals from the villages. In the beginning, people in the village could decide themselves what to give. Later they were forced to give everything they had. At the time, the famine started, she was 9 years old. In 1932/1933 there were no seeds anymore in the village where Natalia has lived, people had no energy anymore. Some died of famine. Many would not move away because they were stuck to their home village. They decided to stay and wait for death.

During the famine, the village got empty. Domestic animals as dogs, cat, horses died of famine and/or were eaten by the inhabitants of the village. In fact, people ate everything they found. At that time, a family consisted mostly of 8 to 9 members (children, parents, grandparents) and all generations lived in one house. Many families died out. All members of one family were buried in the same whole. The grave was covered with earth and grass. There has not been any indication of the name, so that she would not find it again today.

As one sister of Natalia was married to the head of the Kolkhoz, Natalias family had more to eat than all other families in the village. The sister collected food and gave it to her family sometimes even at night, secretly from her husband. Without this help, Natalie points out, they would have died. They mainly ate grass that they boiled normally. Often there was no salt and it tasted disgusting. Sometimes they were not able to cook because they had no matches. Whenever they saw a neighbour having fire, they begged for a flame and brought it to their house.

Beginning of WW2

The fascists arrived in the village the fifth day after WW2 broke out. They came with motorcycles. They had with them one dead German soldier that was buried next to their house. Even if they did not do harm to anyone of the village people, they forced them to give milk, cows, bread, eggs, in fact everything the Nazis could get. The Nazis chose the best houses with the best living conditions to life there themselves. Natalia’s house burnt down in the first months of war. The Germans brought their own “Polizei” (police). Nevertheless, they cooperated with local people to establish their regime. The Germans had difficulties to increase constant influence in this region because the front line changed often. Propaganda could not be installed, respectively was not successful in the village. There were partisans in the wood around them. They did harm to the railway.

Natalia as Ostarbeiter in Germany

Since 1942, the local police caught people in public at night and brought them to the train station to Germany. The people did not obey the police voluntarily. It was not organised in a way that only people of a certain age where kept. Any young person was on their list. The victims were allowed to take one loaf of bread with them.

On Sunday, June 22^nd 1942, at the age of 17, Natalia was forced to leave Ukraine to Germany. The beginning of the war came unexpectedly. Nobody had talked about war before. There was no military education in her village. The weekend she stayed with her parents in the village as usual. Her belongings remained in the dormitory of the technological school during that time. So she could not take any of her stuff (books, clothes) with her.

At one o’clock in the morning, policemen came to Natalie’s house. The mother opens the door. They asked if Natascha was there.  As they knew Natalie’s name, she supposed that policemen were local people. The mother pretended that Nathalie was ill. Policemen assured to her, that in Germany good doctors would cure her quickly. They forced the mother to let them enter the house and went up to Natalie’s room. The mother was crying and gathered some clothes and bread for her daughter.

She was brought to the train station and found herself in a wagon with 25 other people. Everybody could find space to sleep on the ground. They could lie on straw that seemed to be already used by others.  This was quite comfortable. The only door in the wagon was always closed. There was a box in the corner of the wagon that served as toilet. Some curtains assured a minimum of privacy. They were not fed at all. They only could eat what they brought from home. It was impossible for her to escape, as the door was closed and there were too many guardians to watch them. For Natalie, it was the first time to travel in a train.

As far as she knew from Nazi propaganda, she could expect a better life in Germany. Nevertheless, she never had heard any news of somebody who has already been sent to Germany or who would have returned from there. She arrived after five days of travelling.

Due to her knowledge of the German language she acquired at school, she could understand the German guardians quite well although she barely spoke the language. Contrary to what she was hoping, she did not improve her German because nobody spoke to her.

Life at the camp

First she was brought to a camp in Mannheim. It was a house that she shared with around 1000 other people coming from Poland and France. Other trains arrived, like one from Belarus. There were no sanitary services. German farmers went to the camp and chose the workers that seemed to be the strongest ones.

After some days, Natalie together with about 1000 other people was brought to the village Edingen, where a temporary camp existed. There was a river downside on which Germans did rowing exercises.  At the camp, people were asked to put off all their clothes. They got a black blanket that they could use to cover their naked bodies and as cover sheet during the night. The prisoners were guided to a yard, where their hair was cut by two hairdressers in order to avoid diseases caused by insects. One woman had beautiful black silky hair. The head of the camp, a woman, liked the hair of the woman so much that she, following an aesthetic point of view, ordered a chemical treatment of the hair instead of cutting it. Other Germans working on the camp were fond of the hair, too.

On the camp was a 5 storeyed private building in which Germans resided although the first floor having a big room was designated to prisoners. There were three storeyed beds for men.

Along one side of the building was erected an extra building. In fact it was a long room with one narrow huge entrance. You could find several rows of 3 stored wooden beds. There were windows in the wall but without glass. They were used to leave or enter the building instead of using the only entrance. In winter, the whole was covered by clothes to keep the warmth inside.

Daily Schedule

At a normal working day they woke up at 5 o’clock. They had a breakfast consisting of one cup of black coffee and 200 grammas of black bread. After breakfast a tractor took them 18 km to the working place called “LANZ” factory according to the name of the owner. They worked altogether 14 hours per day. Starting at 8 a.m. they had a one hour break at 12 and finished work at 10 p.m.  For lunch they ate a carrot like white vegetable and for dinner there was pasta, soup and no butter. Natalie remembers that they were offered once at Christmas fine white bread. At the beginning of her working stay she thought she would starve but she got used to the nutrition conditions. During three years of working at the farm Natalie got weak but she did not suffer from any disease. She has never received any letter. The prisoners, Russians and Ukrainians, were friendly to each other. German guardians treated them friendly in general. Never somebody was beaten beside those who did not work properly, for example someone would hide behind the working machines to smoke a cigarette.

On Sunday they had their day off. From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. the prisoners were released to go to the town. They had to wear a grass green jacket. On the left front side of the jacket there was a blue patch in the shape of a square with white letters “OST” on it. They were not allowed to take the bus or the train. If they had tried, they would have been refused due the OST patch. Often, they went along the river, swam, collected fruits from trees on the riverside, which was considered as a matter of stealing and thus forbidden. There was no form of entertainment in the camp as music, dancing or cinema. Once she joined a group of best workers that were offered an excursion to Berlin.

The prisoner workers did not receive any money during the first year. In the second there would be a law saying that they should be paid. From this moment on they received 25 till 50 DeutschMark as salary paid once a month right at the working place during working time. The money was put in an envelope with their name indicated on it. They have got the money for two years until the last day of the war. There was a special grocery store for them where Natalie bought for example ice cream or herring.

End of WW2 and life afterwards

Natalia did not know exactly about the end of the war but there were evidences like heavy bombardments of the industrial area where she worked. Thus, her working place was mainly destroyed. There were American supply planes throwing food from the air. As they flew very low, Natalie could understand the laughter of the Americans when the prisoner gathered the food (confect, biscuit) from the ground.

Natalie knew so called “Bunker”, underground villages where German families lived with children to protect themselves from bombs.

After the war, nobody was interested in the destiny of the prisoners. They all still lived 2 month on the camp because the owners were told not to throw them out. But they were not fed, they collected vegetables on the field, if they had still money from their salary they could buy things in the town. Additionally, they were asking neighbours for food or did little paid jobs. They were not given any documents about their work in Germany during the war.

Private farm workers often stayed on their farms because they had a life that was luxury compared to Natalie’s in the industrial area. Natalie did not save any money because she could not exchange it in her home town in Ukraine. She also did not bring presents back home. Her mother fainted from happiness when she saw her daughter again. There were no reproaches from local people being aware she was forced to work in Germany. In 1946 Natalie came back to Konstantinovka. She did not finally graduate because she missed one year of studying. She married, worked as a seller in a grocery store for many years until retirement.