Dubrova Vera Porfirevna

9^th April, 2013

Alessia (Italy), Oksana (Ukraine), Nora (Austria), Kim (Austria).

My name is Dubrova Vera Porfirevna and I was born on October 12th 1924 in Cerenjavshina , a village in Urjevskij district and part of Dnipropetrovska Region.

Life was difficult in my hometown and my family moved to relatives in Lozovaja. My father was working in a mine and my mum was at home taking care about me, my sister and my brother.

In 1942 I was forced to go with German soldiers and put on a train. I decided to escape and found a host where I could spend the night. As soon as it was possible I wanted to go to my uncle’s house. Going in the night would have been too dangerous. The woman that hosted me promised to wake me up in the morning. When I woke up I heard voices of German policemen in the house, but the woman hid me.

In May 1943 Germans said that they would have taken all the relatives of the Soviets who would have not gone to Germany, for this reason I decided and left. Luckily, I was allowed to bring some things with me. I went to Germany by train, which was actually a mean of transport for goods. Men and women were all together.

In first days of june I arrived to Schwerin, where I started to work in a factory. I had to collect fruits and vegetables and later put them in cans. After summer was over I was sent to work in a food factory, whose owner named Janzen. In this factory more than 400 people worked. They were all from different countries: Croatia, Serbia and Soviet Union. Usually we spoke Russian, but there was also one girl who knew German.

The working conditons were not bad: at 7 am work started, at 9 am we had coffee, at 12 pm we had lunch in the factory with different meals every day. When there was some food left from the lunch, we were allowed to bring it home for dinner. Sometimes I gave that food to friends of mine. At 4 pm we had coffee again and at 7 pm work ended. They also gave us to two loaves of bread per week and furthermore some margarine and coffee. Every friday we got a salary of 15 German Marks.

On the weekend we did not have to work but on the first half of the saturdays we had to clean the work places and on the second half we cleaned our sleeping places. At the second floor of the factory there were rooms for workers where we used to live all together. We had to change the bed linen of our beds every two weeks. The clean ones were on the bed when we return from work. Germans afterwards checked if everything was clean. Sunday was free: we were allowed to take walks through the city, but only if we would be back on time.

As some worker had the possibility to listen to the radio, we heard that the war was over:  Russians were in the city and set us free. Those days German people said to the Soviet soldiers that we, the Ostarbeiters, were there volunteerely.

When the Soviet Army liberated us, we were sent to a close village, named Gustrow, where we lived and worked there until September.

In Gustrow I also got to know my future husband, who was originally from Brest and worked as a soldier in the Soviet Army. We married in 1945 and our son was born on 9^th May 1946 (Victory Day). Later my husband was sent to the “Chaljabinsk 40”, a secret factory, which was actually a nuclear plan, and came back ten years later. He started then working in a brick factory.

In 1955 I moved to Konstantinovka with my husband. My family knew that I was in Germany, but I did not tell anyone else that I was there as Ostarbeiter. I tried to have contact with other people who have been in German, but only around my hometown in Dnipropetrovska Region, because I did not know anyone in Konstantinovka.

I worked in the glass factory “Avtosteklo”, but I refused to work in the military production part of the factory.

Germany paid me three times money for reparation, but I did not receive any money for my husband’s work, because he died in 1993.