大象传媒

Vera's journey to slavery by Vera Smereka

Submitted by Julia Reynell with Vera's full permission.

The train was going fast to the west. Towards evening we crossed the frontier between Ukraine and Belarus. There were thick, endless forest, poor unpainted houses in the villages and different looking people. The strangeness struck us with a cold sense of reality. Goodbye to our beloved sunny Ukraine! Our motherland, warm and gentle. We were now in another land and even the sun had left us. Heavy clouds covered the sky and a cold wind blew into our wagon. We shivered. It was late and they had not given us anything to eat or drink. Hunger, the filth of the wagon and lack of washing facilities annoyed us. Some of the girls started to argue, some cried, some swore, cursing the Germans and wishing them all the evil in the world. But they were like children, minutes later they were friends again and sat together by the doors talking and singing. They sang the sad songs and love songs of our country. Their young voices were loud and clear, overcoming the noise of the rolling wheels of the train.

Late the next morning our long train arrived at he large railway station of Bialystok. Near the station a number of Jews were working, cutting large trees, mending the railway lines and digging trenches. They all had intelligent faces and looked at us with sympathy, waving their hands and smiling at us. We answered with smiles and friendly but shocked looks. They were such fine people and yet they were forced to do
the worst jobs possible. Uniformed Germans with rifles guarded them, watching and, it seemed to me, forbidding them even to look at us.

The train stopped for a long time. The sun was getting hotter and we were all locked in the wagons. The dirty straw they had given us was rotting on the floor and it smelt. We were tired and exhausted, shocked and bewildered. Suddenly it seemed that a whole army of German soldiers came to the train. They started to unlock the chains on the door and ordered everyone out, together with our belongings. They put us in columns of four and made us march towards some buildings near the station

The day was hot, the sun burnt our faces and dust from the road covered us with a film of dirt. The door to a low cement building was open and we were ordered inside. It was a bathhouse, a huge cement hall with a large number of showers. Inside, on the stone floor, stood hundreds of naked girls supervised by soldiers who laughed and joked at the shyness and tears of the girls. Oh God! I though, shocked by what I saw. We were told to go inside, get undressed, hand over our clothes for disinfecting and go past the row of attendants who smeared our heads, armpits and groins with liquid yellow smelly soap and then sent us under the showers.

The smell of the soap, the steam, the humiliation and exhaustion overpowered me and I fainted. I remembered girls covering their faces with their hair and hiding behind each other, and then I did not remember anything else. When I came round I was wrapped in a white sheet and surrounded by women in white coasts. They asked me my name and age and gave me a drink of water. A kind woman spoke to me in Polish. She shook her head saying 鈥淭errible . . . you are too serious for your age . . 鈥� How they found my clothes and how I got dressed I do not remember but as soon as we were dressed again they marched us back to the station. The sun was burning hot. Our heads smelt of disinfectant and soap. Our hair had not been properly washed and now, wet and sticky, it gathered dust from the roads. We were tired, hungry, thirsty, very, very angry and upset, and we cursed the Germans.

Back at the station they told us to sit beside the railway line. Dropping our bundles and cases on the ground we sat on the dirty platforms under the scorching sun for a long time. Someone said that they would give us some soup but we did not want to go for it. Everything seems to be lost for a girl when her honour is offended. And we were all offended. At that moment I swore in my heart never to respect the Germans.

Valia lost her faith in the Germans too. She asked me to go for a walk along the railway line and confided in me. She told me how she had talked to the Germans at home because she knew their language. They had promised her that she would be happy in Germany. 鈥淚f I had known that they would treat us like this. Now I don鈥檛 believe anything good is awaiting us.鈥� Tears rolled down her cheeks but she did not wipe them off.
鈥淭his is only the beginning,鈥� I said.

Trains passed us full of German soldiers who looked at us, two sad and lost girls walking along the line. They shouted 鈥淪chon! Hubsch! Pretty, lovely!鈥� Were we pretty? We did not know and did not care. The insult of all those men in the bathhouse looking at us and laughing at us had wounded our hearts and our pride. The whole world seemed dark and cruet, strange and hostile, filled only with the feeling of our hurt and humiliation. Girls sat around, miserable and lost in their own thoughts. Many were crying.

It was night when we were packed into the train again. There were fewer wagons and we had no room to sit, never mind lie down. Squeezed together we stood all night, not knowing where we were being taken. It was raining now and drops of water fell on us. How could one sleep in such condition? 鈥淭hat鈥檚 Germany for you, girls鈥� said someone in the darkness. Remarks like that went on all night.

We were glad to see daybreak. When it was light the train stopped and we were ordered out. We sat beside the railway line. More wagons arrived and half the girls moved out of ours and we were left with the same group in which we had set off from home. We were glad to be together as we had got to know each other over the last five days and already felt like one family. Most of us lay down on the damp floor or sat on our bundles and slept all morning. The train was moving fast, the wheel clattered and the whistle roared loudly but sleep now overpowered everything else.

When I awoke it was midday. I looked at the girls. They slept, sighing in their sleep, twitching with inner weeping, their sad dirty faces full of sorrow. And yet they were so young and innocent, like children lost in the wilderness of life. Even Valia had forgotten her appearance; her beautiful blue hat lay squashed by her side, her freshly permed hair was uncombed and her proud intelligent face marked with tears. Olia lay far away in the corner. Oksana had a protective arm around her. Her shoulders twitched form time to time as if even in her sleep she was crying. Sonia looked poor and forlorn in her simple grey skirt and homemade blouse with embroidery on the sleeves.
I sighed. Looking out through the chained door I saw the well-kept houses, small gardens and green fields of this strange country we were passing through. Why did they have to bring us here? What do I have to do with these strange houses and little
toy-like gardens? What have we in common with these strange, unfriendly people who speak a different language and treat us like slaves, or, worse, like animals locked in cages in a fast-running train? Tears rolled down my cheeks.

I lost count of how many days and nights we travelled. The train ran on and on. It would stop for a few minutes for us to go out into the fields. At some stations they brought us potatoes cooked in their jackets or some brat. Another time they would bring soup for anyone who had a container to pour it into but the soup was so tasteless and bad that we threw it out despite our great hunger. At night the doors were closed, chained and locked and we slept in the darkness on our bundles on the floor.

It was cold. In our country we did not have such cold weather in the middle of June. It would be sunny and warm in our now far away beloved Ukraine. We did not have any blankets and were dressed in summer clothes. At night we clung together to keep ourselves warm. We had not water to wash ourselves and only the lucky ones with a bottle could fill it with drinking water at a station when the train stopped for refuelling. We were tired, hungry, cold and exhausted and no longer cared where we were or when our journey would end.

Then one morning the train stopped and someone outside shouted 鈥淏erlin!鈥� Through the narrow opening of the door I saw the golden rays of the sun reflected on the horrible helmets (frightening even in the pictures in our school books) of many policemen. Why policemen? We are not criminals. We are only innocent young boys and girls who have been taken away from hour homes and our parents. What for? Why do all these frightening German policemen have to guard us?

BERLIN

In Berlin the young people were set to work. Vera and other girls were sent to a textile mill to work at printing woven material. Vera was able to act as interpreter between the girls and the commandant of the camp. He was a man of very short temper and Vera had many tussles with him while doing her best for the girls. After Vera refused to spy on the other young people in the camp he had her removed to the Lichtenberg camp and to work in the Knor-Bremse metal plant where, because of her knowledge of German, she had a secretarial job in the manager鈥檚 office.

Again, there are vivid descriptions of the work and living conditions in the camps where so many young people were shut up together. They slept in double bunks on hard boards and with few blankets. They had insufficient shoes and clothes and not enough food though when, later, they had a small wage to spend, some of them learnt to barter. The close quarters meant relationships were sometimes very fragile 鈥� great friendships one day, enmity and jealousy the next. When some boys arrived in the next door barrack they were made welcome. At one stage a 鈥楩riend鈥� appeared and was allowed to take small groups of girls to church and to his house and eventually they were all allowed out to the parks at weekends although they still had to wear the detested OST labels on their clothes (East European Worker). Each day the young people had to march in columns of four the three kilometres to and from work, guarded by German soldiers. When they got back at night they rushed to queue for food.

Eventually all this became too much for Vera and she succumbed to rheumatic fever. She was sent to Mahlow hospital outside Berlin which was run by the Germans but with Russian Prisoner-of-war doctors and nurses, a few Ukrainian speakers among them. The greatest fear of everyone at the hospital was that they would catch tuberculosis as there was no cure for this disease at the time.

After four months in the hospital Vera returned to the camp and slightly easier work in a team of older people of mixed nationalities sorting machine tools. They were led by a German man who had been wounded earlier in the war and who showed great friendliness towards Vera. On one momentous occasion he gave her two tickets for the Opera. She and a friend saw 鈥淢adame Butterfly鈥� amidst the splendour and beauty of the Berlin Opera house. They were caught returning to the camp late at night but she refused ever to say who had given her the tickets.

One Sunday in the park Vera met Ivan, a man from Carpathian Ukraine. He had been a lawyer but then fought in the war, been wounded, and was now working in Berlin with a group to promote the Ukrainian cause for independence. They struck up a close friendship and eventually he helped her to escape from the camp. There is a touching description of her secret farewells to the girls she had got to know well in the camp. Then she had to acquire an answer and other documents so that she could live and working Berlin. When she had these Ivan found work for Vera with an elderly couple who ran a restaurant. She later worked in a larger restaurant run by a family who grew fond of her but of course knew nothing of her history. At this time Berlin was being heavily bombed by the allied forces.

Just before the war ended a decision had to be made. Ivan wanted Vera to go to the west with him. He was determined never to return to Ukraine while it was under Soviet rule. She was very torn; she knew that many people who had been in the west were heavily punished if they returned to East Ukraine, but she was desperately homesick and longed to see her parents and family again. Finally she agreed to go with Ivan and one night in February 1945 she slipped out of the house where she was living and joined him and his colleagues. She very nearly didn鈥檛 manage to get her passport back from the restaurant owner as he became suspicious but had to let her have it as nobody was allowed out in the streets without one.

After living for a time on a farm in the Harz Mountains where Vera felt totally isolated as Ivan was working on the Ukrainian Relief committee, they moved to Goslar where they found many other refugees from the East. Ivan managed to find work but food was very short until food parcels started to arrive through the agency of UNWRA. Vera agreed to marry Ivan and with the help of friends they did this in style although sad that her mother was not there and her father could not perform the ceremony. Many of the refugees were moved into Displaced Persons camps. Here Vera was able to teach and they both joined in the full community life. Some English Quakers came to visit the camp and in 1947 Vera and Ivan decided to take up the offer of a new life in England.

The second part of Vera鈥檚 book tells of her life in England. She and her husband and other displaced persons were sent to Bradford to work in a textile mill. Vera was a burler and mender and Ivan worked on the machines. They met up with other Ukrainians in the area and an Anglican priest allowed them to use his church hall for their meetings. Later they had their own priest and their own building and a strong community built up with choirs, drama, talks, Saturday School for the children, etc. Vera had already learnt some English and went to several evening classes. She taught in the children鈥檚 school but was determined to better herself and trained as a nurse and worked at the Bradford Eye and Ear hospital. Vera took Ukrainian children to various Children鈥檚 Holiday Camps and even took some of them to Europe. Eventually she was able to revisit Ukraine and found her mother and sister again 鈥� her father had died and her brother had been killed in the army in Russia. She and Ivan made several joyful visits to his and her families. Ivan died in 1997 but Vera still lives in Bradford.

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