Russia at war 1941-1945

sunflower, and in case the sparrows picked at it, he put a pair of old pants over it; honest to God, he did. So I said to him one day: 'In our country we grow sunflowers by the mile, how many pairs of old pants do you think we'd need if we used your agricultural

methods? There wouldn't be enough pants in the whole of Germany... ' He looked kind of sheepish."

"Bah", said Galina, "these Germans—they're really unlike all other people. Now the French—they're quite different. We used to see them on Sundays at the goods station. We used to talk to them. And some of our girls went further than talking. The point is that if a Ukrainian girl gets pregnant, she is sent home. There was a dark shed behind one of the large piles of coal, and there some of our girls would go in the evening and make love with the French. God knows, they were so hungry and worn-out, they didn't really want to make love, but they hoped they might get pregnant. And the French were friendly—

real comrades. There was one Frenchman I knew, who managed to escape from the

factory. The night before he escaped, he said to me: 'There's a little corner near the stove in the workshop, and I'll leave you a note—try to pick it up tomorrow morning.' I went and looked for the note, and I found it, and with it were three bars of chocolate. The note said: 'This is all I've got. Good luck to you. I have run away. I hope they don't catch me.'

They didn't catch him, though they sent the police all over the place. None of us said we knew anything. There was this strange solidarity among all of us non-Germans; a real fellow-feeling, a common hatred of the Fritz... And that feeling that we were not alone kept us going for a time, in spite of everything... But my health was becoming so bad that I felt that if I stayed on much longer, I should fall ill and die. And I did not want to die.

There was an Austrian there called Hans, who worked in our workshop. He showed me a

pamphlet about Thael-mann and said: 'Although Thaelmann is a German, he is a good

man.' I said I doubted whether any German could be a good man. He gave me a queer

look and for a moment I wondered if he wasn't a provocateur. Then I said: 'Oh God, what do I care, anyway? I want to go away, back home, and if I don't, I'll just vergift myself, poison myself...' Then Hans said: 'You won't betray me, will you? Here are six

cigarettes'—and he slipped them into my hand—'Boil them, and let the infusion wait for an hour, and then drink it. It will give you a bad heart, and they may send you home. But don't give me away.' I did as he told me, but I was in such poor health that my stomach couldn't take it, and I was sick. I told him what had happened and he gave me six more cigarettes, telling me to try again. This time it was successful. It gave me terrible palpitations, and I was in a state of complete physical collapse. There were moments when I thought I'd die. I was taken to hospital. They x-rayed me three times, and decided my heart was so bad I would either soon die or be a cripple for life, so they gave me a certificate allowing me to go back to the Ukraine. But before that happened, I stayed in hospital for two months and five days. They patched up my hands, which were in a

terrible state, and I had many visitors—there was a Greek girl who came to see me, and two Serbian girls; these were among the best. Altogether the Serbians and the Czechs were the best people of all; the French also were good, for instance Henri, who escaped and left me those three bars of chocolate; he was a real Communist. On the whole, all the foreigners in Germany were terribly decent people, and we had with them a common

language as we never had with any Germans... Well, that's not perhaps quite true; there were two decent Germans I knew during all those months. One was a girl called Frieda.

She knew much more about what was happening in the world than I did. I knew nothing

—except from her. It was she who would tell me about the war in Russia—where the Red Army was. She got very excited at the time the Germans were stopped at Stalingrad. My feeling was that she was a double agent. She pretended to work for the Nazis, but she was also an agent of the Popular Front. She often talked to me, and warned me, and told me to warn the other girls that any Ukrainian girl who was intimate with a Frenchman or any other foreigner was liable to be shot. Frieda was a damn good girl. There was also

another girl called Amalia—I didn't know her so well. But I later learned that both Frieda and Amalia had been shot by the Gestapo. But, in general the Germans are a wicked and crazy people."

Finally Galina returned to Uman, after another harrowing two months' journey. She was a physical wreck by then, and spent three months in bed at the house of some people who had befriended her. After that she took a job as a putzfrau—a cleaner—at a hotel occupied by German officers. But her troubles were not yet over.