.By Yekaterina Gavriliuk, student of the 10 A grade (Surikov secondary school).
Project leader: Lidia Pavlovna Belyaeva
City of Krasnoyarsk – 2005
Anna Ivanovna Sachuk was born on the territory of the West-Ukraine on the 8 March 1925, in the village of Yagodno, to be more precise – in Volhynia, not far from the Polish border. Her parents were farmers. There were 9 children altogether. Anna was the second daughter. Already during the first days of the war the village was occupied by German troops.
None of the youngsters suspected that they would soon be forced to leave their home grounds.
For the situation at the work front in Germany was not developing as successful as it did in the theater of war: there was a considerable imbalance, i.e. a lack of 800.000 rubels in the war economy. Civilians, who were either recruited or driven out of their country by force to work in Germany, will certainly remember this.
Generally speaking, Göring’s authorities had worked out in detail a four years’ plan regarding the exploitation of Russian workers. “Qualified workers – Germans, of course – were to deal with the production of weapons; it was not their job to take a shovel and dig ditches or break stones – that is what the Russians were just good enough for … German workers practically became the bosses over the Russians”.
In the beginning they would still obtain the agreement to use Russian manpower; it was intended to recruit people and then have them work for food, the payment of an allowance and the promise to also guarantee the support of the family members left behind. But all these ideas merely existed in their plans – reality looked entirely different.
On the 24 February 1942 the first directive was passed with regard to the Eastern workers: 380.000 workers were asked to get prepared for being transported to Germany to work for farmers; 247.000 individuals were to be assigned to work for industrial enterprises.
In January 1942 the first train with 1.100 workers from the civilian population left in the directon of Germany. The second one left Charkov shortly after the 20 January – 1.147 individuals. And from then the flood of people would not stop to go towards the west. Early in March they began to transport off such a number of people regularly every week. By the 27 February 1942 their number already amounted to 39.292 (they were between 16 and 55 years old). Among them was the 17 year-old Anna Sachuk, although it was her elder sister who should have gone instead of her; sister Masha (she was 19), however, was taken ill with typhoid fever, and since the village elder had been able to convince the German authorities not to send away by force more than one person from each farmstead, their father had decided that Anna should leave.
Generally speaking, the deportation procedure went in a very tragic way. Many victims only learned about their lot a few hours before they were to leave; some were captured during one of the well.organized raids, which were carried out even in cinemas or when the people were just buying food on the market. All this happened without a warning. About one third of the people forced to depart in a transport were either not permitted or simply did not manage in time to pack up some food and clothes to take along. They had to undergo a formal medical examination, which basically nobody had a chance to escape from. No less tears were shed in the countryside than in the towns. The prisoners travelled on freight cars; they sat or stood upright, closely packed, and were hardly supplied with food. They received nothing but a thin soup made of swedes. And sometimes they even had to go without anything to eat at all for several successive days. It was a trip into a dark, uncertain future.
Thus, by the 1st of August 1942, the occupied territories of the Soviet-Union had put at Germany’s disposal more than a million of people to work for factories and pits. Where did they take all those unhappy persons to? To huge transitional or distribution camps, where the newly arrived were held awaiting further distribution. Typhoid fever and other epidemics were raging among the prisoners. Their heads were shaved, their clothes disinfected by boiling hot steam, their skin was treated by some special disinfectant solution. The were fingerprinted.
The slaves were distributed according to their nationality. From now on their situation would depend on where they were taken to.
The people in the camps suffered terrible hunger, but the girl we are talking about became aware of the fact that Germans could behave in quite different ways. Every now and then catholic monks drew near to the barbed-wire fence, gave signs with their hands and slipped some of the prisoners something to eat. Those, who were working for industrial enterprises, were kept in guarded labour camps. They lived behind barbed-wire fences and their workman’s passport siad: “The bearer of this passport is allowed to leave the camp zone exclusively for marching off to work”.
They were intended not to cost their masters an unnecessarily big amount of money. In January 1942 a tax was introduced on the “salaries” of all workers from the east. After this tax had been deducted, they disposed of nothing but 50 Reichsmarks per month, from which they had to pay for their food and all other costs of living. Just 3–5 Reichsmarks were left to spend for personal things. They received about fourteen times less, than German workers would have been paid for doing exactly the same work.
Anna had to work for a factory in Essen. There she stamped, graded and packed different rubber articles. She was not allowed to leave the factory site. She and her fellow sufferers had the letter “R” sewn on their clothes. Next to her, prisoners of different nationalities were working, among them a few friends – girls like her, who also came from the countryside. The meals they were supposed to get in accordance with the plans could hardly be called “food” – some luke-warm, undefinable hotchpotch, properly speaking – a watery soup. And this is what they received day by day. During the first winter a hige number of Eastern workers died from hunger and cold. At the instance of the Ministry of Supplies the norms for bread and sugar beets were then increased.
Nonetheless the German Reich was already on the point of elaborating a new program of profiting from foreign workers. Intending to reduce the enormous burden for German women, who, towards the end of 1942, were in danger and suspense of being called up into the Labour Army, it was decided to bring female workers between 15 and 35 years in age to Germany, in case they were sturdy and healthy – like the ideal German woman. About 400.000 individuals were to come to work for just a little bit of food, coal and clothes – without any vacation privilege: their weekly leisure time was limited to three hours.
Once an older German came to the factory to select a couple of workers for himself. He had a big farm with cows, pigs, poultry and large buildings. He was also looking for workers to keep the household in exemplary order. So far they had done all the work by themselves, except for the milk, which was given away for further processing. Among those he selected were the girls from the village of Yagodno. Anya was something like an all-round talent: she knew how to work in the field, she was an expert in herding and taking care of cattle; however, she was needed to help with the house-keeping, where she was to wash the dishes, make the beds, change the sheets, etc. The lady of the house was very strict but just. The girls kept her in fond remembrance, maybe, for the reason that, at Christmas, she used to set the table with a lot of delicious food and presented them with little gifts.
The nearer came the end of the war, the more they were longing to get home: all this grief and sorrow, hard work and permanent yearning for their relatives, their home, their native places …
They were allowed to write two letters home, for elsewise they had no guarantee that at least one of them had arrived. And this is how it, in fact, came about: at home they did not know at all what happened to their daughter in the meantime. She was thought dead, although there was still a tiny glimmer of hope. The nerves of the Germans were tried to the breaking point, too. The clearer the victory of the Russians was looming up, the more spiteful became the conduct of the master of the house. He had Russians, Poles and Frenchmen work for him, but it seemed as if he hated the Russians more than the others. Every now and then he would get so wild that everybody expected him to die from a heart-attack during such a fit of rage one day. The ordinary people, however, began to take compassion for the Eastern workers. Once the old German groom said to the girls: “ What do you expect? Don’t you see what is going on with him? Run away, whereever you want to – the camp or the factory, butyou better never return to this place”. He personally bought tickets for them, and so the girls first went to the camp and from there to the pit, where the men one coal, while women sized and packed it. And then she returned to the factory in Essen.
For some reason or other they had the faint hope to possibly returning home one day. Air-raids took place more and more often. one day Anna’s friend Tanya was fed up with the whole situation: “I can’t stand this any longer”. Unfortunately, bombs hit the area with utmost precision. The coal mine was completely destroyed, all human beings around were killed. Nothing was left but deep bomb craters. Having returned home, Anna reached out Tanya’s clothes to her parents. It was all that reminded them of their daughter. The situation was particularly grievous, since the end of the war began to show.
At the same time the people were getting alarmed that members of the SS might get the order to execute all Eastern workers and prisoners of war. And they did not have such great fears without reason. On the 26 March 1945, just six days before the arrival of the Americans, 81 women and 6 men were shot in the Hirzenhain camp by a firing squad.
The Führer tried to realize one of his last plans: the destruction of all military and industrial objects, of all means of transport to avoid that they fell into the hands of the enemy.
The whole German population, including all Eastern workers and POWs were given the order to move off on foot, whereby nobody had made any preparations for their food supply or the organization of the transport in general. The people were irrevocably running headlong to their doom.
How many people were deported to Germany during the war?
The bills of indictment delivered against the cruellest German war criminals on the occasion of the Nuremberg Trials revealed that the German occupants deported 4.978.735 individuals from the civilian population. About 75% of them happened to get to the western parts of Germany, which were occupied by British and American troops. The Eastern workers were dreaming of who would bring them freedom. It was rumoured that the Soviet troops severly condemned theirs, the Russian forced labourers; they assumed an utterly negative and pityless attitude towards them: “While we were fighting at the front, you were working for the Fritzes!” – Fate, however, has something else in store for them. The town of Essen was liberated by the Americans, who had compassion on the poor people. They treated them gently and supplied them with food.
The question of whether to return to the USSR or not brought about joy on one side, but it also was a tormenting decisison. Merely 15% of the “westerners” insisted to go back to their home country, 15% did not want to return at all and 70% were in two minds about it. The Soviet authorities tried hard to win them over – they fought for their return in the true sense of the word. Huge placards were turning up at all corners: “RUSSIANS, DON’T BE AFRAID! COME BACK HOME!!! YOUR HOME COUNTRY IS WAITING FOR YOU!!!”
In spite of this emphatic appeal hundreds of thousands of former Soviet citizens did not return to the USSR. The formed up the “second wave of emigration”. Their number amounted to 451.651 people. Among them were many of Anna Ivanovna’s friends. Some joined American soldiers and went with them to the United States, others still nowadays live in Austria, Belgium, France, England, Norway, Denmarjk, The Netherlands, Switzerland and even in Morocco, Turkey, Palestine and Argentina.
The repatriated Soviet citizens were “welcomed” by workers of the NKVD and the SMERSh (special counter-intelligence directorate of the Soviet Armed Forces from 1942-1946; translator’s note). The whole first batch of people was immediately caught by the GULAG system. They were “classified”: common soldiers and sergeants were determined to serve for the reserves of the People’s Commissariat of Defense; officers who had been POWs and prisoners of war, who had served in German special formations, as well as adherents of Vlasov and workers of the police were taken to special camps of the NKVD; male Eastern workers were taken into the army after medical check-up; the remaining were sent to the places of their future permanent residence, whereby they were strictly forbidden to go to any big cities, such as Moscow, Leningrad or Kiev.
Until the 10 December 1945 the USSR took 2.033.164 repatriants. Anna did not have to think twice, but immediately decided to go back to her home country, although two of her closest friends had gone to France or America respectively.
Their trip back home was characterized by conditions very similar to those they had had to cope with when they were transported to Germany by force. They had to stay in freight cars for a period of 3-4 weeks. About 40 individuals had been placed on each waggon. They were not allowed to talk to the free civilian population. They were hungry: 500 grs bread, 10 grs sugar, 0,15 grs fat and some fish and water. About 57,8% returned to the USSR after previous checking. Between 1944 and 1948 the USSR government passed 67 decrees on the rights of repatriants, 14 of which were dealing with allowances and financial security. Enterprises and ministries undertook the obligation to find work for them. But in the biography of many of them remained an unremovable black spot for the rest of their life: the time they spent as forced labourers in Germany during the war.
When, four years later, Anna crossed the doorstep of her parents’ house, her mother was just standing by the kitchen stove, intending to bake bread. She turned round, her knees failed her, for she had already given up all hope to ever seeing her daughter again.
On the 8 March 2005 is going to complete the 80th year of her life. She is a happy woman, although she is living far away from her original Ukrainian home grounds, but considerate relatives are living around. She likes to watch “Wait for me” on TV, for her heart and soul know how to understand the feelings of those, who are suffering grief and loss. Maybe she even hopes to be able to find at least a few fragments of remembrance about the years of her own hard youth.
