Interviewed by Daniela, Valentina, Kim and Benjamin in the living room of his home in Konstantinovka on April 5th, 2013. Text in square brackets serves as explanation and commentary added by the interviewers. An asterisk [*] denotes locations that could not be verified for sure.
I was born on March 16th 1936 in Konstantinovka. I am a descendant of cossacks. My great-grandfather was serving in the army under Bogdan Hmelnikov [Bohdan Khmelnytsky?]. For good service, Bogdan gave to his soldiers land property. These lands passed into the possession of my parents, so our family had a rich life. But when the communists came to power they took everything away. One of my brothers died when he was small. I was the oldest of the remaining children and had three more sisters and another brother.
When the war started I was five years old. The Germans threatened to shoot us with the Jews so my father took two of my sisters and during the night they fled to the Nikolayevskaya/Mykolaivs'ka Oblast [region]. After some time, my younger sister followed as well. There the people lived well because of the kolkhoz [collective farm].
My father worked in a high position in the municipality. In spring 1938 he got very sick because he was hiding in the basement from Germans. [Very likely the exact year is misremembered, as Germany didn't enter war with the Soviet Union until 1941.] After that he died. Police took my youngest sister to Belgium when they found her while she was on a walk. My oldest sister got married and the third was making ropes out of hemp. Only my mother and I remained home.
In spring the German police came to our place too. I remember how they said “Schnell, schnell, schnell, kleine Kinder, aufstehen!” [“Quick, little children, get up!”]. They gave us fifteen minutes to gather some things and took us away. We went to Hersn [*, probably Kherson in Southern Ukraine], then to Peremeshal/Peremesel [*], where we were divided according to our capacity to work. People older than fifty years weren't taken. Then they told us to take off our clothes and we were examined. The physically healthy were sent to Germany. We were sent to Poland. There we only stayed three days because there were too many people in the camp. After a one day march we arrived at a new camp.
In this camp there also was my oldest sister, who was pregnant, as well as her husband and his sister, who was fourteen. There we lived under bad conditions because we got less to eat, only “briukhva” [turnip soup], and for many people it wasn't enough. In the morning police took away the bodies of those who died during the night in a wheelbarrow.
One day, they gathered over thirty people, including my family, near the camp. They put us in a row and we understood that buyers were to come and select some slaves. Guards and buyers signed some papers, as did my whole family, but we didn't know where we were going.
It was to a family named Rabin, the man was Polish, his wife Elsa was German. They had seven children. I knew Polish perfectly and that's how we communicated in the family. On the first evening they gave us sugared hot water, the next day the same with a piece of dry bread. They knew not to give us too much food otherwise we would have died because of our empty stomachs. After that, we sat at the same table and worked together.
Frau Elsa trusted my mother to do all the work: Cook the food, clean the house and milk the cows, of which they had sixteen. Every morning the police came in a car to take the milk, in exchange for our work there. The family was also given more land for us to work on. Once, police came to take me, but they were drunk so I ran away. When they took me a second time, I ran away again, to the river Vistula, which was near, and hid in the dry grass. It was winter and I stayed there till morning. After this happened, the family hid me in a kind of room under the stove, where they also kept potatoes.
After some time my family moved to another house. We worked and ate there together with the owners. For sleeping we had our own home. There were cases when that family hid English paratroopers, which was a very big risk.
One day my mother and I went to grab some potatoes from the field. We saw four planes, two German and the other Soviet, which were shooting at each other. The Soviet planes also started to shoot at us, but they only hid the bucket with potatoes.
I also have some good memories about this time. For example I remember one German speaking Russian, who secretly gave me some pieces of sugar. He was also saying that Hitler's ideas are bad, as are the things he is doing.
Our village was near “Grabina”, “Pilzna” [*]. A man told us that the Soviet Army passed “Pilzna” [*] and suggested that we stay there because “Stalin doesn't forget the people who were in Germany”. But my mother wanted to go home, knowing her children would be there as well. We went home by train and in “Peremeshal/Peremesel” [*] they examined as again.
When we arrived home, it was already given to another family. For some time we lived in our grandfather's house. My mother went to work in a sovhoz [state-owned farm]. My sister Nadia, who in Belgium had also been in a nice family, came home. We built another house. Our neighbors didn't know that we had been in Germany.
Sometimes drunk Soviets came, not knowing where they were and asked about the Germans. [It's not clear when and where exactly this anecdote fits into Nikolai Grigorievicis narrative.]
My sister introduced me to a friend of hers, who was very kind and hard-working. We didn't date, but we got married. I built my own home with my own hands. My wife didn't know about the fact that I was in Germany for fifteen years. When I told her she reacted positively.
After the war I worked in the Konstantinovka glass factory. I started as a hard-working laborer but after some years I was promoted. Many times my photo was on the honor wall. At the holiday's demonstrations they were screaming: “To the commander Zakablucnii Nikolai Ura Ura” [laughing].
Today I'm really happy having a very good wife.
I was born on March 16th 1936 in Konstantinovka. I am a descendant of cossacks. My great-grandfather was serving in the army under Bogdan Hmelnikov [Bohdan Khmelnytsky?]. For good service, Bogdan gave to his soldiers land property. These lands passed into the possession of my parents, so our family had a rich life. But when the communists came to power they took everything away. One of my brothers died when he was small. I was the oldest of the remaining children and had three more sisters and another brother.
My father worked in a high position in the municipality. In spring 1938 he got very sick because he was hiding in the basement from Germans. [Very likely the exact year is misremembered, as Germany didn't enter war with the Soviet Union until 1941.] After that he died. Police took my youngest sister to Belgium when they found her while she was on a walk. My oldest sister got married and the third was making ropes out of hemp. Only my mother and I remained home.
In spring the German police came to our place too. I remember how they said “Schnell, schnell, schnell, kleine Kinder, aufstehen!” [“Quick, little children, get up!”]. They gave us fifteen minutes to gather some things and took us away. We went to Hersn [*, probably Kherson in Southern Ukraine], then to Peremeshal/Peremesel [*], where we were divided according to our capacity to work. People older than fifty years weren't taken. Then they told us to take off our clothes and we were examined. The physically healthy were sent to Germany. We were sent to Poland. There we only stayed three days because there were too many people in the camp. After a one day march we arrived at a new camp.
In this camp there also was my oldest sister, who was pregnant, as well as her husband and his sister, who was fourteen. There we lived under bad conditions because we got less to eat, only “briukhva” [turnip soup], and for many people it wasn't enough. In the morning police took away the bodies of those who died during the night in a wheelbarrow.
One day, they gathered over thirty people, including my family, near the camp. They put us in a row and we understood that buyers were to come and select some slaves. Guards and buyers signed some papers, as did my whole family, but we didn't know where we were going.
It was to a family named Rabin, the man was Polish, his wife Elsa was German. They had seven children. I knew Polish perfectly and that's how we communicated in the family. On the first evening they gave us sugared hot water, the next day the same with a piece of dry bread. They knew not to give us too much food otherwise we would have died because of our empty stomachs. After that, we sat at the same table and worked together.
Frau Elsa trusted my mother to do all the work: Cook the food, clean the house and milk the cows, of which they had sixteen. Every morning the police came in a car to take the milk, in exchange for our work there. The family was also given more land for us to work on. Once, police came to take me, but they were drunk so I ran away. When they took me a second time, I ran away again, to the river Vistula, which was near, and hid in the dry grass. It was winter and I stayed there till morning. After this happened, the family hid me in a kind of room under the stove, where they also kept potatoes.
After some time my family moved to another house. We worked and ate there together with the owners. For sleeping we had our own home. There were cases when that family hid English paratroopers, which was a very big risk.
One day my mother and I went to grab some potatoes from the field. We saw four planes, two German and the other Soviet, which were shooting at each other. The Soviet planes also started to shoot at us, but they only hid the bucket with potatoes.
I also have some good memories about this time. For example I remember one German speaking Russian, who secretly gave me some pieces of sugar. He was also saying that Hitler's ideas are bad, as are the things he is doing.
Our village was near “Grabina”, “Pilzna” [*]. A man told us that the Soviet Army passed “Pilzna” [*] and suggested that we stay there because “Stalin doesn't forget the people who were in Germany”. But my mother wanted to go home, knowing her children would be there as well. We went home by train and in “Peremeshal/Peremesel” [*] they examined as again.
When we arrived home, it was already given to another family. For some time we lived in our grandfather's house. My mother went to work in a sovhoz [state-owned farm]. My sister Nadia, who in Belgium had also been in a nice family, came home. We built another house. Our neighbors didn't know that we had been in Germany.
Sometimes drunk Soviets came, not knowing where they were and asked about the Germans. [It's not clear when and where exactly this anecdote fits into Nikolai Grigorievicis narrative.]
After the war I worked in the Konstantinovka glass factory. I started as a hard-working laborer but after some years I was promoted. Many times my photo was on the honor wall. At the holiday's demonstrations they were screaming: “To the commander Zakablucnii Nikolai Ura Ura” [laughing].
Today I'm really happy having a very good wife.
No comments:
Post a Comment