FOURTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL TAKEN BY FORCE

Maria - A Ukrainian national reflects on her experiences of war

In 1942 I was fourteen years old. Germany occupied my homeland. I was taken by force, not just me but thousands of us. We were taken for free labour and had to work for the Germans. We received no pay, no clothes, nothing. At the beginning we worked twelve hours a day in a factory.

We were brought to Germany and had to work very hard. It was very difficult. We were hungry and were given just a slice of bread and a black coffee for breakfast. At dinner time we would have just soup and another slice of bread, and the same again at night.

After nine months the Belgian Red Cross came to the camp we were in. All those under- age were put on farms. This was easier because we had more food and would eat with the farmer and his wife and children. They made sure we had some clothes, not the best clothes but enough. Still we had no pay. I was fortunate because they treated me very well but some of my country people were treated very badly. They wouldn’t let them in the house. They had to eat and sleep in the stable on the hay and straw. It was very difficult.

I remember the day when we landed in Lichtik in Germany. It was the Thursday before Good Friday 1942. Four thousand girls were placed in factories, I was one of them. When we were in the camp at night it would be very dark and we would be praying when the bombs were being dropped, that the bomb would hit our camp and we would be set free but it never happened. The nights and days were very long.

In the October I was very ill, I had TB. When the Red Cross came they put me in a hospital. This was somewhere in Barvaria. There were seven girls like me, one died and six lived. A woman came, I don’t know who she was, and she said we wouldn’t go back to the factory, she would put us on a farm. She also said that it wouldn’t be that hard work because we were under-age but we still had to work hard.

When I went to the farm the farmer himself was very compassionate but three months after that he was called into the army and he went to the Ukraine. Sometime later he came home on leave but his wife didn’t realise he was coming home. She, on that day, smacked my face and I can always remember him coming over to me and saying to her, “How would you like someone to smack one of our children in the Ukraine?” At that moment I hugged him. It meant a lot to me that here was a man who had some compassion. He wore his German uniform and he was really nice to me. From that day onwards the farmers wife seemed to treat me better.

One day a police van came and all the foreigners had to go a few miles. There was a Polish man standing there with his hands tied and there was a tree. They wanted us all to see that a girl shouldn’t go with a foreigner and a foreigner shouldn’t go with a girl. We went to this park, we didn’t know where we were going or what was happening. We were really frightened. They brought this Polish lad, the German girl’s mother had reported that he kept coming to her daughter, and we all had to stand there and watch them hang him. It was a horrible experience, really horrible and dreadful. His name was Sigmund, I can still remember his name, and he was only sixteen. It was just horrible.

I remember also when we were in Lichtik that we had a blanket each, it was very cold, and we used to sleep two together so that we had two blankets round us. I remember one night waking up and thinking that I was very cold and thinking what was wrong with me. I touched the girl next to me and she was cold. I tried to cover her up with a blanket but when I woke up in the morning she wouldn’t wake up, she was dead. She was about sixteen or seventeen.

Looking back over the years I realise the pain I have been through and the suffering. Those early experiences of life will remain with me forever. Even before the Second World War began I can still remember my father being arrested by the KGB. That was in 1936 when I was eight years old. A knock came to the door and my mother answered it. She shouted my father and he went. That was the last time we saw him. Someone said that he was sent to Syberia but we will never know what happened to him.

The war came and another type of suffering and difficulty was experienced. I can remember my mother hiding me because they were trying to catch boys and girls to take them away. Then somebody told us don’t be too frightened as the Germans have stopped taking boys and girls away. So naturally everybody came out of hiding and they were just waiting for us. I can remember very clearly when they took me away. My mother was screaming: “You have taken my husband, now don’t take my daughter,” she was screaming and screaming. That was the last time that I ever saw my mother.

I wasn’t the only one. There were thousands of people who went through similar experiences. In many ways I suppose you could say I was one of the lucky ones, I am still alive today.

There was one town near Stuttgart where there was an ammunition factory. I don’t know if it’s true but I have been told that over twelve thousand boys and girls from the Ukraine were killed there. The factory was underground and one bomb came and killed them all.

Since the collapse of communism I have returned to my home three times. I have many cousins there still and there is one who is like a sister to me. She used to live near us when I was a child and it was very moving going back and seeing her for the first time. She told me that my mother used to go every night on the road thinking that I would return. My mother would see the German trucks coming along the road and she would think that I was in one of them. She kept going each night searching for me up until the winter when there was too much snow. She was never to see me again.

In the labour camp and also when we worked on the farm we couldn’t go out by ourselves. We wore a badge, the Polish people wore one with a ‘P’ on and the Ukrainians wore one with ‘OST’ on. We were labelled and we just couldn’t go anywhere by ourselves. When we where in Lichtik we couldn’t go out side the wire, it was electric and would kill you if you touched it. Even on the farm we also couldn’t go out.

Not all the Germans were bad people. I can remember a lady in the post office and she was really nice. She had a husband and two sons in the Ukraine and nearly every night she would give me a drink of milk and some toffee.

Fifty-eight years ago when I was fourteen I was only a child. Now fourteen year olds are more mature and able to stand on their own two feet more than I ever was, or any of my age group at that time. We were children taken away and put into enforced work. Sometimes you couldn’t tell boys from girls as all their hair was shaved off. There was no soup, no shampoo and we got nits.

In 1991, Ukraine became an independent state and my mother died just nine months before that. She was ninety-seven years old. It’s strange, I’m so sad when I think back, that if she had lived just a few months longer I would have been able to see her, forty-eight years, after I was taken away from her as a fourteen year old girl. I am told that in my mothers old age she would often think about me and that she never forgot me, I was always on her mind. Every time there was a knock at the door she would always call my name thinking it was me.

The war was finishing and we knew the Americans were on their way. We were in the cellar with the farmer’s wife and children and we heard all this shooting and bombing. All of a sudden there was a knock on the cellar door and I will never forget it as long as I live. I opened the door, I had never seen a coloured person before, and there was this black face with white teeth staring at me with a smile. We had been liberated. I came out of the cellar and I could here all these American voices. At that time I couldn’t speak English and I didn’t know what they were saying. The kept talking to us and patting our shoulders in a friendly way. I think they were telling us that we were alright.

After this I stayed on the farm for a good two months but the war had now finished and things were a lot different. There were lots of foreigners and grown up lads and girls in their twenties. They told us not to go anywhere and they would go and find out where the American camps are. They then took us to Munich, to a camp. I was just turned sixteen at this stage. I stayed at the camp in Munich for three years and it was great, they were all Ukraine, we were all together. We all supported and loved each other and had some great times. I learnt to sow and to do tapestry. After my first year there I worked with some children in a nursery for the next year and a half before leaving the camp and going to England.

When we were in the camp we had a choice to go to either England, Australia, America, Canada or France. I chose to go with Michael, who I met in the camp and who later became my husband, to England because we thought it would be the nearest to the Ukraine. Looking at it now France would have been nearer but we didn’t know that then. When we came to England we were made very welcome. We came to Blackburn and we moved to Oakfield on Preston New Road. There were thirty-eight girls there, all Ukrainians. Mr. Marshall, the landlord, was the personal officer for foreigners and he really did look after us.

Michael, who I met in the camp, was taken to Scotland. Mr. Marshall managed to find where Michael was and we began to write to each other. In 1948 I went to Scotland to see Michael. I came back to Blackburn and Mr. Hampshire, the personal officer for Ukrainian women, did everything possible to get Michael to Blackburn. So, Michael came later on that same year. When Michael arrived he went first to work in Burnley Colliery and then we got married in February of 1949.

Looking back over the years there are times when I could feel very bitter. We were a vulnerable people. Don’t forget I was taken from my mother at the age of fourteen. My father was also taken away when I was eight years old and from the day I was taken away I never saw my mother again. After saying that I feel that I am a forgiving person. I have been hurt many times in my life and you can never forget those early years. You will carry those early experiences with you to the grave but even so I can still forgive. How could people do this? Human beings killing each other. If you were in the forest and an animal attacked you, you could look it over as a natural reaction but when human beings do this to each other it’s just unthinkable, and they’re still doing it today.