Petrova Nadezhda Petrovna

Interviewers: Catherine Shubert, Ина Александра Решетиловкий.

Date and location of the interview: August 12, 2010, living-room.

My name is Nadezhda Petrovna Petrova, I was born on June 17, 1924 in the Kursk region. I had an elder sister and an elder brother. We were not very well-off, so our father decided to take care of us and so we moved to Stalino. I was 9 at that time. I had been studying at school till 1941 and completed 8 years of studies.

The war broke out and our father was taken to serve in the army. Germans arrived. They forced us to work. We had to clean out the snow at the airfield and clean toilets. We were very cold. We ate everything we could find. Germans had collected our passports and didn’t return them in the end. They checked our documents – if you hadn’t had any with you, then you were a partisan. We were very frightened. There was strict passport control in the city. When I went to the commandant's office to demand my passport back, they refused to return it.

We lived in barracks at that time. On May 5, 1942 they arrested me and sent to Brest by train.  My sister was sick, so Germans decided against taking her. During all that time we were bombed by Germans and they didn’t allow us to go anywhere. At the assembly place I was taken by my master. He lived in the town not far from Berlin. We arrived there at night.

In Germany I worked at the factory, where we cut lamps and tubes. Half of the workers were Germans, another half were Russians. We were on friendly terms with Russians. We were not allowed to communicate with Germans.

We lived in the camp on the ground floor, men occupied the first floor. Africans lived next to us. Sometimes they helped us. On the whole the food was terrible there – they gave us turnip soup which had worms in it. We got 200 g of bread daily, but it did not last us a day. We worked the whole day long. Once a week we were allowed to go outdoors for 2 hours. We wore a special badge with letters “OST” in it. Russians joked that it stood for “Be careful! Soviet comrade!”(in Russian). We were forbidden to go out without a badge. I got acquainted with one woman. I went to her house in my free time and washed her dishes. As you may guess, I didn’t have a lot of free time on my hands.    

There were a lot of people from our parts there. There I got acquainted with my future husband, but he was from a different region. During my stay in Germany I didn’t have any contact with my family. From newspapers I learnt about the death of my father. He died not far from the place where I stayed.

Until the end of the war we had been bombed all day and night long. Once, bombs struck the barracks where we lived. We sat in the cellar together with Germans. One half of the cellar was destroyed. There was no light, so we couldn’t see anything without a flashlight. Soviets arrived and released us. There was one Polish woman there, very savage, she used to beat everybody up – she was shot. But they didn’t touch me. We were sitting in the demolished house the whole night long. At that time I already knew I was pregnant.

On the Victory Day I left Germany. I was afraid to return home after the war. Therefore I decided to go to the Orlovsk region, where my husband’s parents lived. I stayed at my mother’s-in-law and worked at the kolkhoz (collective farm). Later I left for Stalino. My baby hadn’t survived.

Stalino had undergone some drastic changes as a city. A lot of city-dwellers died, they were lying on top of each other. My mother and sister were in Konstantinovka at that time. My brother returned home from the army and passed away. I moved to Konstantinovka and found a job as a shop assistant.

I have two children – a son and a daughter. My son lives nearby in Konstantinovka. My daughter resides in Buriatia.

Germans generally weren’t bad, but naturally you can’t say that about all of them.