Edges Magazine Issue 23: Mummy Don't Cry

EDGES MAGAZINE Issue 23

October 2000

MUMMY DON'T CRY

Anna reflects on her experiences when Germany occupied her homeland, the Ukraine. She was 12 years old

I was about twelve and a half when Germany occupied my homeland. They took the young people from my town. They said it was only going to be for six months. My mother and father came to the train station with me and hugged me. My mother cried her eyes out and said, “I may never see you again.” We were put in a cattle train and we couldn’t see the daylight or where we were going. During the journey they did stop a few times so we could have something to eat. They then put us in a big hole and took all of our details. Everybody was strict and some of the people had all of their hair cut. We were put back in the train and then we stopped again for a few days. We were again put into a big hole and my mother had given me some food for the journey which I put under my pillow so nobody could steal it, but when I woke up in the morning it was gone. Somebody had pinched it, I had nothing and I was crying. I thought I would starve. I cried and cried all the journey as I wanted to go back to my mother, I was only twelve. I knew in myself that there was no way back.

The journey in all lasted two weeks. They took us to Germany. I was there for a year or two in a big camp. They sorted out where we would go, whether to the factory or the farm, and I was sent to the farm.

The farm I went to was a very big farm. The two people who owned the farm were elderly and they knew that I was too young for them, so they took me to another farm in the same village which was smaller. I was tired from the journey and straight away they took me into a stable to show me what I had to do. First of all they showed me what to do with the pigs, how to work with them and feed them, and then they showed me how to milk a cow. They gave me a stool and a bucket and told me to sit down. Once I was sat down they told me to milk. There was no milk coming out, only my tears were going into the bucket. I had never done it at home before and I was tired but I had no choice.

The landlady on the farm wasn’t great, she was always picking on me. The mother-in-law on the farm was a much nicer lady, she was really kind. I can always remember one evening before I went to bed I was kneeling down saying my prayers and the landlady was watching me. The next day when I went out everybody was making the Sign of the Cross, they were kneeling and laughing. The landlady had told them what I had been doing. This is what I did at home, as a family we used to pray every night. I kept praying that I wanted to go home, for somebody to help me. I kept saying my prayers even though people made fun of me. With every little thing that would happen the lady of the farm would pick on me, anything at all. She would make me do more work than the others. We would go early in the morning before sunrise to make the hay. It was better in the morning because it was more cool and you could get more work done.

At about eight O’clock in the morning we would come back from making the hay. Then we would have to start to feed the cattle, then have some breakfast and then go back out into the fields again. The whole day would be very busy. It was very hard working all day with only a few breaks in-between.

I worked on the farm from 1942 to 1945. I can always remember one night when I was in bed there was a big force of wind that woke me up. It frightened me and I went downstairs and I didn’t go back up for two weeks. I told the landlady that I couldn’t sleep in the room, that I was frightened. Even if she would kill me I wouldn’t mind, I just couldn’t go back up to that room.

I used to write to my father and he would write back to me. He would never mention my mother and sometime later I found out that my mother had died. It was on the day that the wind touched my face while I was asleep. My father tried to keep it a secret from me because he didn’t want me to get upset. I got the letter and I read up to the line where it said my mum had died. I dropped the letter and started to run. I ran through the village and my landlady was in the bakery. I was screaming and crying and couldn’t bring the word out to tell her. She told me to go home and go to bed. I couldn’t go to bed. I was crying, I was running and I didn’t know what to do.

For quite a few weeks I was different. I worked but I couldn’t really concentrate. There was nobody to talk to or to feel sorry for me. My mother had died and I was grieving all alone. It was very, very hard. You lived in a strange country, nobody there to support you, to hold you, to touch you. I couldn’t speak much German so I couldn’t tell people the pain I was going through. At that time the German people didn’t like the foreigners.

I remember the day we were liberated. We were all so happy. We were now free and we could all do what we wanted. A message came to us that the Russians were coming and they were going to take us all back home.

In the camp after the war I took really ill and nearly died. All I could take was porridge. I could take nothing for two months except liquids. After that I gradually started building and started walking. I then went to an American camp and I was there for quite a while. There I put my name down for coming to England.