They
have been noticed in the town since the 5th of August. Small groups
of diverse loud youth here and there broke into the drowsiness of our
streets, like flowers in dry grass. “Who are they? Why don't they
speak in our language?’’ - passerbys wondered. Some institution
chief officers (at the post office for example) were scared when
strangers were making photos of their buildings and one taxi driver
after having seen this colourful company with balloons and stripes
offered his version: “You're not having a gay parade here?”
But
actually there was a simple explanation – that these people were
volunteers of an international summer camp. Students and other young
people interested in history arrived here from Germany, Austria,
Hungary, Russia and Ukraine (20 people altogether) to interview and
write down the memories of former concentration camps prisoners –
“Ostarbeiters”. They were amazed that more than a hundred of them
were still remaining in our town – that's why they called the
project “Last Prisoner Story”.
The
question “Why did you leave your business Europe's cultural capital
Vienna and came to our godforsaken town?” Stefan from Vienna
answered that he, as well as his fellow volunteers, believed that
true understanding of the history of one country or nation was
possible only by studying the life story of one person or one family.
Divided
into small groups (with at least one Russian-speaking person in each)
the volunteers visited our fellow-countrymen who had lived through
the severe trials of the Second World War. The first person they
visited was our eldest – the 97-year old Hero of Socialist Labour
Fedor Trofimovich Fedorenko who travelled through the whole war from
Artemovsk to Berlin in the same Soviet lorry - ZIS. It's strange for
a driver, but for his whole life he practically never smoked and
rarely drunk.
No
less astonishing was the story of the 5-years old “Ostarbeiter”
Nikolay Zakabluchniy, Fedor Fedorenko's neighbour in the village
Berestovo.
These
meetings became possible thanks to N. Stukan – a poet and
ethnographer from Konstantinovka. Before, Nikolay Pavlovich had
guided volunteers to a site that is sacred to the citizens of
Konstantinovka – Sergeevskaya gully (Sergeevskaya Balka). He told
about the way the Nazis annihilated here almost 20 thousand children,
women, old men and our soldiers, about how difficult it was to create
a simple momument for the dead, and about the shame that next to this
sacred site there is a town disposal dump, an osseous factory and
sewage-purification facilities. Volunteers appreciated Nikolay
Pavlovich’s enthusiasm and civil awareness as this man obviously
devoted his life entirely to discover and memorize the people who had
died in Segeevskaya Balka.
Besides
that in their first days in Konstantinovka volunteers attended an
emotional meeting with a son, a daughter and a grand-son of Nonna
Lisovkaya-Bannister, an “Ostarbeiter” from Konstantinovka, that
took place in the library of the town. Nonna’s children came to us
from faraway Memphis and spoke about how important it was for them to
see their mother’s native land and to meet her cousins and their
grandmother. A big audience listened to Ludmila Perfilova’s,
Nonna’s
cousin, Tatyana Zaichikova’s and Lyubov Gerasimova’s
recollections, who remembered very well Nonna’s mother – Anna
Yakovlevna. Also they listened to E. Dudnik and N.Zhukova, the
voluntary translators of the book “Secret diaries of Holocaust”.
But the most impressive was to hear Nonna herself speaking recorded
on audio. The guests from the US received presents from the Literary
Alliance, the O. Tikhiy Association and the Ecology and Culture
Center “Bakhmat”.
The volunteers
are staying in our town for another week. They do not complain about
hot weather and any inconvenience but they eagerly ask town citizens
to help them in collecting memories of prisoners and former
“Ostarbeiters” (we have already reported that a book layout,
museum stand and website would be created).
By
the way, when meeting the former “Ostarbeiters”, it turned out
that many of them didn’t know about various programs of aid to
people who were forced to labour in Europe during the Second World
War. For example, many administrations of federal states of Germany,
as well as companies and enterprises that have been operating since
War times, invite former “Ostarbeiters” with accompanying persons
so they can tell about their work at the place. Europe, like our
volunteers, also wants to recover and reveal the real situation of
what was going on during those hard years.
Written
by V. Berezin for “Provintsiya” newspaper, 11.8.2010
Translated
from Russian
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