| |
I had to leave Drushkowka on the 27.
September 1942. In Germany we arrived on the 15. October.
First we were accommodated on a farm and had to reap potatoes
until the cold snap. When it gets colder, we were sent to the
Bücker Company in Rangsdorf. There I stayed till the end of
spring 1945.
The food was terrible. Two or three rotted potatoes we had for
lunch. In the evening we got 50 gram bread for the next day.
We ate it at once and went to bed hungry. We were swollen
because of the hunger, we had hunger oedemas.
My friend Nina worked for the Bücker family and peeled
potatoes in the kitchen. She said to me: „Come on Maria, we
give you potato peelings. We lay them into the dustbin, and
you take it out of it.” I went there quickly with a bag and
stepped in the last row of the crew. I was bold and spoke with
everybody around. The watchman asked: „What do you have there?”
I showed it to him, and then he said: „You are a pig!” He
threw the potato peelings over my head and shouted: „You are a
pig!” But I said: „I’m not a pig, I’m a girl.” I picked the
peelings up (he permitted it to me) and brought them into the
camp. In the room there was a stove of iron. I baked the
potato peelings on it. I ate and shared them with my friends.
In the factory I had a „very good” job: it was a big storeroom,
there were discs and screws up other things. When I got the
right documents I had to give these things up.
We were three, there were two Frenchmen. They respected me.
They got small parcels from the Red Cross. One of them hid a
tin with soup in his pocket and gave it to me. Oh, I was
walking on clouds. I ate one’s fill of it.
One day my German master told me: „We have to bring down that
thing, which is hanging up there.” He asked me: „Will you
climb there?” I said: „No!” Then he asked the Frenchmen, they
refused. Then he sends me. Command is command. It was a part
of a plane. I dropped it down. Then the master came to me and
said: „Stupid!” I said: „I am stupid?” He beat me, I fall down
and my nose bled. I said to him: „You are stupid, too!” The
Frenchmen came close to us. I cried, and the master went away.
I had to continue my work.
With the German workers I mustn’t speak, even not smile. But I
did everything wrong. I said to the German, that the Russian
army will beat them now. A German said: „Hitler and Stalin are
stupid.”
The watchmen, who guarded us, were armed. All around there
were barbed wire fences. Around-the-clock we were watched.
On Sunday we were allowed to go out for a few hours. An
acquaintance German took me to his house. I darned his socks,
cleaned his flat. He tested me: he placed money, a ring, if I
would take it. I didn’t take anything.
He often took me to his home and gave me sandwiches in return.
When I was rescued at the end of war, I came to the
resettlement camp 221. There our officers came and asked: „Who
can speak German?” All were silent. Then I was asked. – „Yes,
I can.” – „Then you will come to a margarine factory.”
I asked: „And what should I do there?” – „You will operate the
scale while the supply.” – Yes, I will go there. Especially
because it was a margarine factory.
I went there and the German welcomed me friendly. There was
another girl at my place, who was on a farm before, so she
could speak German. I spoke as well as I could. There was a
typewriter, and I type night and day. I thought: „That will
help me, to get any job.”
Then the general came and said: „We need a shorthand typist in
our regiment. You can type?” – „Yes” I answered. –„We take you.”
He said to me: „You will work in the secret-detachment. But
first we have to check, who you are.” And they asked in
Drushkowka. My father was on the front, also my brother, my
mother they wanted to deport to Germany. But they sent she
back, because she was too old.
I began to work in the secret-detachment and got to know my
husband, Iwan Koschewoj. He was manager of the pharmacy in a
military hospital. I married him. We went to Potsdam and let
register our marriage.
Then my husband was sent to Kamtschatka; we lived there for
seven years. There I was shorthand typist, too.
My husband wanted me to join a medicine-educational
establishment. Their answer was: „This woman was in Germany.”
I mustn’t study. In a party assembly he said: „She has nothing
to do with this. You, and you, and you are guilty.”
Finely we came to Drushkowka, and then I was the wife of an
officer, but I couldn’t find a job. My husband began to work
in a pharmacy, and I had to start farming, because I had no
profession. Later I became a cashier. |
|
