M.F.’s mother, Olga Petrovna Kazachiok (Kazachek, Kazachok, Kazachuk) was
born in the town of Zolotonosha, Cherkassk Region, Ukraine. She finished her
studies of agronomy with the local technical school. Afterwards she worked for a
seed factory in Moldavia in accordance with her professional qualification.
Late in 1941, when the Germans marched in, she and her sister were sent to Germany by force. There they became inmates of a concentration camp not far from Rostock. During her stay in this camp Olga Petrovna gave birth to a daughter; she called her Margarita. The father was a Frenchman – Roger de Lacomte (Laconte, Lacompte?). Just because of him Margarita’s mother had a chance to survive in the camp, for he was forwarded parcels through the Red Cross. In 1944 Olga Petrovna was released from the camp by allied troops. She had no idea where to go and what to do next. By accident she found a job on a farm as a milk maid. However, she did not live there for long (6 months), but decided to go back to the Ukraine with the first train available.
Olga Petrovna entrusted Little Margarita in her grandmother’s care. She stayed with her for more than 8 years, till 1953.
M.F. recalls her grandmother and tells us the following: “Granny was hardly able to read and write; they had just taught her how to write her name, when she was to affix her signature to something. While she had been working for rich people as a housekeeper, she awakened to the fact that it was very important to go to school and get a good professional education afterwards. Thanks to grandma’s capacity to understand , Mum and her sisters later received good schooling and professional training.
Granmother baptized me by making the sign of the cross above my head and naming me Lyubov Fedorovna. Only when Mum came to fetch me to where she lived, my name was changed into Margarita. Mum liked to read Dumas; in his books he had often come across this name”. (AB – M.F.’s original birth certificate got lost by her grandmother’s carelessness. The documents which were issued in Yeniseysk many years later, do not even mention Rostock as place of birth, and instead of Margarita, these papers say Rita. The day of her birth is just shown as an approximate date. This circumstance did not allow M.F. to obtain a payment of compensation from the German government in the 1990s.
Olga Petrovna had to escape from her home town. She amended her personal papers and found a job in the town of Turinsk, Volhynia. But there were a lot of “well wishers” around at that time, who had nothing else to do but denounce Olga Petrovna who, as a result, was sent to the Taishetlag in 1947. There she became acquainted with her future husband.
Moisey Solomonovich Schur, born in 1900, was the son of a rich Jewish family. He
was very well-educated. He finished the universities of Kishinev and Paris, had
a command of six languages and owned a large library.
When O.P. and M.S. were released in 1949, they betook to a place called Maklakovo (AB – I suppose that this was the place where they were to spend the internal exile, a common practice after the serving of a sentence in one of the camps at that time.; this has to be checked, however). Soonafter daughter Lena was born.
In 1952 O.P. went to the Ukraine, in order to take Margarita home. M.F. recalls: “When Mum came to fetch me, I was eight years old. But I had no clothes to wear, and this was the reason, why I was iúnable to attend school; and how could I go to school without shoes? So I was just sitting at home without knowing what to do. And now Mum came and brought along clothes: lace-up shoes and a kind of uniform. We reached Maklakovo on the 31 December 1952, shortly after midnight, when everybody was celebrating the beginning of the new year. But the people did this in silence, nobody was singing out, nobody was yelling.
Moisei Solomonovich had three jobs altogether: he was working for the timber-procesing industry in Maklakovo as an engineer, he was the head of the x-ray room and he taught foreign languages.
M.F. remembers: “In Maklakovo we wanted for nothing, for Mum was an agronomist
by profession; we gathered a lot of vegetables from our kitchen garden. Mum even
grew fruit trees. She loved asters and roses, and you would find roses
everywhere inside the house, even during the winter. We always had enoug h to
eat. We had two goats which gave milk. But nevertheless we bought milk
additionally every now and then. We were always keeping a bull in order to have
meat available, 50 chickens, 2 pigs and 250 rabbits. The rabbits were kept in
three cages, which stood on the big kitchen table; they had to be cleaned up
three times a day and then the bottom had to be filled with splints again.
In other respects the house looked quite empty: nothing but a table, benches and beds. But there were roses everywhere – on windowsills and tables and even on the floor. And there were many, many books, which father used to order from Moscow. He had his own large library.
But we had not a rag to put on. Day in, day out I wore one and the same cotton dress; the toe-caps of my lace-up shoes were entirely haggled; I had already wrapped them with wire hoping to avoid them falling definitely apart. My feet usually were all wet. And Mum merely had one nice dress. Father had ordered the fabric from Moscow – it was green with white spots.
Moreover, she possessed a down-filled scarf – which was something really luxurious at that time, as well as a half-long coat, which father had also sent for in Moscow. Mum allowed me to wear the scarf when I went to school. Once, I smudged it with ink inadvertently. I was terribly afraid of going home – for Mum was a severe person. My teacher walked me home; she explained to Mum that I had not acted in bad faith.
In 1953 father received the official permission to leave for his home town, but he just replied: “How am I supposed to go on a trip wearing such poor clothes: I have to buy garments at first. And only then I will leave”. Grandmother helped us; when she left the Ukraine, she had taken along some fabric and a sewing machine – and now she bean to clothe us.
M.F. also recalls her father: “Dad insisted that we rceived a good education. He managed to wake me at 1 o’clock, right in the middle of the night,coercing me into listening to a radio transmission which was held in English.
He never dissembled that I was not his biological daughter. He even came to my defence, when Mum scolded me”.
M.F. recalls Maklakovo as well: “We literally lived there with all our belongings accurately packed in two suitcases. On Yubileinaya Street, which ran next to ours, knifings were a daily occurrence. In the evening mother used to put all clothes and other belongings into these two suitcases, just in case a fire broke out. Mum would also put her scarf and dress immediately back into one of the suitcases, as soon as she had taken them off. This was a safe depository, after all.
Father knew a lot of people. They were all victims of repressions like him: physicians, engineers, headmasters, etc. When they held their meetings they always adjourned to the big room locking the doors behind us. We were strictly forbidden to enter the room”.
When Stalin died, all people cried their eyes out, while we sat in deathlike silence at home. Father, however, was walkng about in a good mood, and I knew that he was happy about his death.
Father died from a heart attack late in 1956.
In 1960 another tragedy happened. At that time Mum was working in some passageway leading to the timber-processing combine. She was run over by an automobile and had to walk on crutches for a whole year. But the accident had some more consequences for her life. One of her legs had become shorter than the other. For that reason she was assigned a job with the pump house, where she had nothing to do but turni the water on and off.
Due to Mum’s serious injuries my sister, my brother and I had to go back to the Ukraine. There I attended the technical school, the same one which Mum had finished earlier. But I studied animal health. After I had finished my own studies, I found a place for my sister and brother at the same technical school.
The technical school was well equipped, the even disposed of an attached cattle-breeding farm and market garden with fruit trees, where the students had the possibility to do practical training and take their meals. After the course of studies they had to work for a period of three years. I was assigned to take up a job in the town of Chogeri situated in the neighbouring region. I was very shocked when I saw all the post-war ruins there. The territory looked all war-ravaged. It took a long time to finally reconstruct the destroyed buildings.
Later, I returned to my mother. As from 1965 I worked in Antsiferovo as a veterinary, afterwards in Kargino.
Mum died in 1972. At home nobody ever mentioned that she had earlier lieved in camps; everybody was afraid to talk about this. I only learned the whole truth from my aunt”.
Interviewed by Yelena Kozlova
(AB – comments by Aleksei Babiy, Krasnoyarsk “Memorial”)
Fifth expedition of history and human rights, Novokargino 2008