The Road to Auschwitz and Back: A Former Death Camp Prisoner Shares Her Memories

They say time heals. Seven decades have passed, but the wounds inflicted by the war have not healed for those who survived it.

World War II, the most destructive and bloody war, was aimed at the extermination of peoples of "non-Aryan" origin. In the numerous death camps created (Buchenwald, Auschwitz, Majdanek, etc.), millions of citizens of the USSR, Poland, France, Belgium, and other European countries were exterminated.

The order to create a concentration camp in Auschwitz was issued in April 1940, and on January 27, 1945, Soviet troops liberated it. There, as evidenced by the materials of the Nuremberg Trials, the Nazis exterminated 2.8 million people, and according to other sources, even more.

In 1947, a museum was opened on the territory of the camp, at the invitation of which 14 former prisoners of Auschwitz from the Vitebsk region traveled to celebrate the 70th anniversary of its liberation. One of them is Valentina Volkova, chairman of the public association of former prisoners of extermination camps in Poland and Germany "Druzhba" (Friendship). She spoke about this trip and her impressions.

Bandenkinder No. 61960

— Despite the fact that we had already been to Auschwitz for the celebrations of the 60th and 65th anniversaries of its liberation, this year, for the 70th anniversary, we still cried for the first two days. It was very difficult to recall everything we experienced there in childhood.

It came to mind how we were transported there in cattle cars, covered with straw and packed with people. We mostly traveled standing up, holding small children in our arms. There was no water, no food, no toilet.

When we arrived at the Auschwitz platform on September 9, 1943, we were met by Germans with dogs and SS doctors. I remember my mother, grandfather, and three brothers standing next to me, all waiting to see where they would be sent. The distribution was carried out by Dr. Mengele, who was called "the black death" because he experimented on prisoners: some to the barracks, others to the crematorium, and some to the gas chamber. We were sent to a barrack that I remember very well. We found it when we were in Auschwitz for the 65th anniversary. There were only damp brick walls and three-tiered bunks with nothing to lie on. Five or six children sat on each bunk.

Everyone was immediately shaved bald, given striped clothing, wooden clogs for their feet, and numbers tattooed on their left forearms. Mine was 61960.

We were only with our parents for five days, and then everyone was separated into different barracks. When we children were being separated, everyone was screaming. I was very scared. In the new place, I got sick, a rash appeared on my body, and I was transferred to another barrack. There, they smeared something on us and put us in some kind of bath. After the treatment, I was sent back to the children's barrack. Cold, hunger, and death again.

Since we were from a partisan zone, we were called "bandenkinder" — bandit children — in the camp.

The mortality rate was very high. When we were driven out to the assembly ground for roll call, there were piles of corpses lying near the barracks. Then a cart would arrive, they would load the bodies onto it and take them to the crematorium, and the ashes were scattered on the fields to fertilize the land.

Older children in Auschwitz had their blood constantly drawn, and the younger ones met the same fate in Potulice, where we were transferred in early 1944. I remember a huge sheet hanging there with a hole cut out of it. A small arm would be inserted into the hole, and they would take as much blood as they needed. Afterwards, the children were brought back to their beds, given a glass of hot tea and a carrot. At that time, it was the greatest gift.

The next stage was the concentration camp in Łódź. Daily outdoor sessions naked and barefoot, dousing with water, and running. For every violation, we were made to kneel on peas. But one day, I couldn't stand it anymore and bit the instructor on the hand.

When the Red Army troops advanced, the children were placed in a basement where we remained until our complete liberation. I remember when two soldiers with submachine guns entered. We didn't know who they were, so we started shouting: "Uncles, don't shoot, we are Russian!"

Victory was met in Moscow

— Victory Day, May 9, 1945, we met in Moscow, where we were assigned to orphanages. My younger brother Vanya and I ended up in the Mstinsky orphanage, which is 20 km from Veliky Novgorod.

There was a prisoner-of-war camp in the city. I remember those elderly Germans in torn greatcoats who had learned Russian well by then. We sometimes brought them food, and when they took it through the wire, they kept saying:

"It's not our fault, it's Hitler's".

Many children who survived the concentration camps had eyes infected with trachoma, and they literally ran out, we went blind. In addition, there was malaria and raging fever. For eye surgery, we were taken to the Leningrad Military Hospital.

Our entire family was separated. Mother went through Auschwitz, Dachau, Ravensbrück, and Auschwitz again. She returned home only at the beginning of 1946.

My 85-year-old grandfather was exterminated in Auschwitz in the very first week. My brother Timofey was taken from the Potulice concentration camp by a landowner, and he worked in his fields along with other children. My older brother Vladimir survived five camps; he was liberated in Buchenwald. And then, together with our soldiers, he went to Hungary and returned home last of all.

Father searched for us by the numbers on our arms. When he found me and my brother in the orphanage, he didn't take us home right away because there was hunger in the villages at that time, and nowhere to live. We returned home only in 1946.

Appealing to Reason

— Time, of course, heals, the picture of memories fades with the years, the pain subsides. Nevertheless, I wish that what happened in Auschwitz and other concentration camps would never and nowhere be repeated.

Having visited there, we bowed low to our liberator soldiers, and lit candles in memory of all those who died.

There were unpleasant moments during the festive events in Auschwitz. Some Ukrainians and Poles claimed that it was the USSR that attacked Germany, not the other way around. I have a copy of the newspaper

"Pravda" dated May 10, 1945, which published Joseph Stalin's address to the people on the occasion of Germany's surrender, as well as the text of Winston Churchill's radio message. In it, the British Prime Minister congratulates the Russian people on the victory they achieved by expelling the invaders from their country. US President Harry Truman's statement also speaks of liberation from evil forces. I gave them a copy of the newspaper so they could see that it was not us who attacked.

A feeling of resentment chokes me when I read the lines from Stalin's address:

"Three years ago, Hitler publicly declared that his goals included the dismemberment of the Soviet Union and the detachment of the Caucasus, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltics, and other regions from it. He directly stated: 'We will destroy Russia so that it can never rise again.'" What Hitler failed to implement, subsequent politicians did, and his ideas still linger in some minds...

Now, we are concerned with only one thing — that there be peace, that our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren do not suffer, and that we remain the last witnesses of this terrible hell.

Elena Alimova, "Vitebskiye Vesti"