Tatiana Samilovna Griliskaia.

Interviewed by Daniela, Valentina, Kim and Benjamin in the yard of her home in Konstantinovka on April 5^th, 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 September 19^th 1926 in the Khmelnytskyi Oblast [region]. I grew up as the oldest in a family of eight children. My parents were called Ana and Samilov. My father and one of my brothers had work so until the war we were leading a good life. I went to school for seven years before I was taken to Germany at the age of 16. It happened on March 9^th: One of my youngest sisters and I went to see the movie “Chepaev” when the building was surrounded by German and Soviet police in cars. While my sister wasn't taken, they brought me to the railway station. My father was allowed to bring me something, so he came with food, a gray coat, a pair of boots and some other clothes in a small suitcase.

I remember there to be over 47 people in the wagon who were forced also from other villages. Men and women were kept together. We were on the train for over a month. The only things we were given were a bin of water, a cup and some pieces of bread. A hole in the floor had to serve as a toilet. After someone ran away at a stop, the police threatened to kill our families if we tried.

We first arrived in Lublin, in Poland. There, some old women were smoking cigars made from tea to make their hearts beat faster, hoping to be let go. I tried to do the same, smoked three cigars, but the Germans understood and I wasn't released. In Lublin I stayed in a camp for a month. There I lived in a barrack in which were three-story beds made from wood.

Afterward I was taken to “Soest” [*] in Germany. There we were selected, some of us were sent to German families, others to work in factories. Those of us who were sent to families were given a white sign saying “OST”. From my village there were six people: two old women and four young girls born between 1924 and 1926. We, the young girls, didn't want to be separated so we threw our “OST”-signs into the toilet. That's why we were sent to a factory in Schwelm.

 

In Schwelm we also lived in barracks near the factory, where we worked on plane parts and packed them into boxes. But we weren't there for a long time because the Russians started to bomb the city. We were happy that during the bombing the Germans were hiding in the basement, making it possible for us to go to the city to buy sausages, happy to have something else to eat than “briukhva” [turnip soup]. We were hiding it under our clothes, rolling them around our arms, going back to the barracks. The city was bombed almost every day. That's why we were moved to another city: Wuppertal.

Because there we were beaten and not fed, we started to protest. The Germans locked us into the basement and then started to pour smoke into it.

  

When Wuppertal was also destroyed we were forced to enter 47 cars, which brought us to “Schrallburg” [*]. There I was working on plane parts again. Everyone worked twelve hours, except for me: I smoked tea and so I had to work longer [presumably as a punishment]. When all the others went to sleep, I needed to stay to work. One night I was sitting on a chair and was so tired that I fell asleep. The Germans felt sorry for me and decided not to wake me up. They just sat there to watch. When I woke after falling down, I was scared. They took me to hospital, where they tried to calm me down by giving me an injection.

After that I worked in a textile factory. Work wasn't as hard and no one beat us. We had a quiet life, not even celebrating any holidays. And still we weren't allowed to leave the factory and I stayed there until the war was over. I received three post cards from home, but nothing else. We were working there until autumn when we were sent to collect apples and pears which grew near the roads, hiding some under our clothes to take them with us into the barracks. We put them under the beds so the Germans wouldn't find them.

I was freed by the Americans. During the bombing, I was hurt in the leg [Tatiana Griliskaia here showed us the remaining scars]. The people from the barracks went to hide in a bunker. Rocks were falling against the door so all of us were stuck there together: Germans and Russians. We stayed in the bunker for five days without having any water or food. When people came to search for survivors they found us and lifted us out with a wooden bucket.

 

Outside, I lost my consciousness. A nurse gave me a blanket. I didn't know where to go because there were bombs falling everywhere. Accompanied by a Russian woman I went to my old factory, where all the workers had thought I was dead. When the translator [who facilitated communication between the forced laborers and their captors] and the others saw me, they came to embrace and kiss me, saying that I'm “back from the dead”.
 

After the liberation we were sent to Germans families. The family where I was taken treated me very well and was kind to me. We all ate at the same table, including two Polish [ex-prisoners]. The family had two sons: A younger man on one of the fronts and an older one, with wife and two children, on the other. When he wrote letters to his mother, at the end he always wrote in Russian “Hi to the Russian girl”. But I didn't learn the German language.

At the end of the war, I was told to pack my bags and to meet others at a gathering place, to go home by train. I asked the woman of the family I was staying at to give me a pillow I loved very much, and she did. They also gave me some food and a bicycle to go, because the meeting point was more than three kilometers away. Some [ex-prisoners] stayed there, but I went further, closer to the Elbe [river]. We were met by Iurii Zhukov [it's clear from the interview she meant Georgy Zhukov] himself and being checked on a list. They were building a bridge on which we were to go home, so we needed to wait. I worked in a kitchen to clean the potatoes. There somebody stole my things, including the pillow, which made me very sad.

I was brought back to the Khmelnytskyi Oblast, to the village Shepetovka. From there everyone was to go home by their separate ways. When I came back to my village I saw that a big part of it was destroyed, including my family home. A lot of people had died, but I found my whole family alive. The Germans tried to kill them but one of the soldiers knew Russian and told them to run away – which they did, and survived. Back at their old home there only remained the sewing machine which my father had buried in the ground.
 

So we rebuilt our home. During this time, my family had a cow which helped us survive. Everybody in the village knew I was in Germany, but then every family had somebody who had been. We were called “enemies of the nation”. I went to another city far away, where nobody knew about it, to study in a veterinarian college and get a profession.

 

Afterward, I met my husband. He knew all about my past. I went to a kolkhoz [collective farm] to work and during that time I gave birth to a son. Later, my husband and I worked for twenty years in a zinc factory in Konstantinovka. After my husband's death I lived with my son, who had been divorced and a son of his own.

Unfortunately, Tatiana Griliskaia has no photos or documents to remind her of the past.