We were brought to the prison in Ivano-Frankiv’sk. We were not allowed to bring anything with us, not even a comb or a toothbrush. For the first few days, I was put me in a isolation cell. Later, after the first interrogation, I was brought to a cell where there were so many people that it was difficult to even sit. The cells were all overcrowded. There were only young people. They had taken everyone, everyone in succession. But from my village no one else except me and my brother were taken, I think because I did not admit to anything. I did not say anything while still there in the village. I did not understand why I should put people in prison if I had no ties with them except as neighbors. Later they began to accuse me of contact with nationalists. The investigation was very hard since I did not corroborate anything of which they tried to accuse me. On the whole they interrogated me at night with the use of physical force. It went on for four months.
In the cells there were so many people that we were all packed, like herring, in two rows. The cells were narrow. Everyone laid on her side. If someone’s side began to hurt, then absolutely everyone had to turn. Besides this, the floor was bare. It was very painful. Not everyone was brought out to interrogate right away. We were summoned in turn. When someone was taken, everyone else knelt and prayed, and prayed until she came back. When she returned, then we prayed to God that she had returned.
They employed the most frightening tortures and battery. When I was returned, I would be half-dead, black, beaten up like a piece of meat. And this at eighteen-years-old!
In tears, we all prayed. How we asked the Lord and the Mother of God to help us endure these trials! I think that all this could only be endured with God’s help. No one thought about freedom. No one walked out of there. Everyone waited for the end of the interrogation and sentencing. My investigation finished after four months. I was forced to sign. We signed not because we were guilty, but so that they would stop taunting us. And most girls, from both the city and the village, were not guilty. They did not know anything. But they took everything upon themselves only to be left alone. They could not hold up to torture.
When I was at last summoned for trial, everything had already been prepared. They immediately announced my sentence – twenty years of hard labor, five years loss of rights and exile. The troika sentenced me. The sentence sounded like this: “Article 54, betrayal of the motherland, and Article 54.11a, participant in a Ukrainian nationalist organization. They offered me a chance to say my last wish. I said that I only wished to see my family. “I do not want anything else.”
They answered, “Fine.” But my parents were already bound for Siberia. They had been exiled already by this time, but I did not know anything and they did not tell me.
So began a different life – the road to Siberia. At first there was our transport . This was in the month of May. I had been arrested in December. Now in May we were led with dogs to the station in Lviv to the transit camp. On the road an acquaintance shouted to me that my parents had been taken to Siberia. That is how we lost each other.
It was the 9th of May 1945, Victory Day, and we were in transport to Lviv. Right away on the second day we were loaded into dirty, fetid, cattle cars. We traveled for a month and nine days. A wooden pipe, with a diameter about the size of the palm of your hand, was put in the car for our needs. We were given two small pieces of bread and dried fish to eat. Water, which was not even always clean, was given in a beaten up cup. You had to wash, to bathe, and to drink with just this little cup of water. There was no other water.
We traveled to Irkutsk in these cars. During the day we were herded into a dead end at a station and during the night we traveled. We were enemies of the people and people treated us in different ways. One insulted, but another took pity. So we reached Novosibirsk. There we were led to the bathhouse. I was very sick. I nearly died on the road, I was so ill. And in the bathhouse, I lost consciousness. When I regained consciousness, above me stood a soldier with a raised boot. For some reason I remember that I said, “Why did you wake me, I felt so good.” They wanted to leave me there, but the girls shouted and would not give me up. They took me under the arms to the car and we went on.
We were brought to the transit camp in Taishet. There were only young people among us, from fifteen to thirty years old. The majority were Ukrainians. We were all very tired and emaciated. Here they began to sort us. I was counted as an invalid, and we, a group of sick and worn out people, were sent by foot along the road through the taiga to the Irkutsk Oblast, 130 kilometers from Taishet. It took a week to walk to the camp. We were so weak. We did not know where they were taking us. We lived in another world, where no one ever said where they were taking us, why, or for how long.
When we were about thirty kilometers outside the camp, we were herded into some kind of barn, by a fence near the guardhouse, to spend the night. It was already warm. It was now June. The flowers had bloomed. It was green. In Siberia at this time of the year it is already warm. There was a lot of straw and we simply rested in the straw, having been tormented by the bedbugs in the barracks, which had swarmed over us and callously gnawed at us.
In the middle of the night, we suddenly heard another group of people arrive. They began a roll call very loudly and we could hear that they were men. We immediately began to protest. We shouted to the guard that we were not going to sleep next to men. We were very frightened. We began to cry. We thought that they were recidivists. But a man’s voice answered us, “Girls sleep peacefully. We do not need anyone.” They were led in. They all fell in silence. No one spoke. They had no strength. And when they woke us for roll call in the morning and led the men away, we saw that they were living corpses. They were like ghosts. They were shadows of men – gray faces, gray people, completely lifeless in some torn pea-coats and caps with ear-flaps in the middle of summer. They were invalids, who had been sentenced in the 1930's. It was impossible to believe if you did not see it with your own eyes. We were led with dogs and a guard. But they hardly moved forward. They supported each other. They would fall and get up. They fell before our eyes and died. And some medical assistant went and squeamishly felt their pulse. He would throw them by the leg away on the edge of the road. A cart went behind to pick up the dead. To see this is horrible.
Later we arrived at the camp outpost. A road had been hacked through the taiga. On the left side were just camps. The men were taken to the side. One of them said, “Girls, this is the last time we go down this path. We will no longer return from here.”
I remember that one of them rebelled. The convoy guard raised the butt of his weapon. We were forced to lay down on the ground with our faces down. You could hear someone shout, “Girls, remember we are not traitors.” When we stood up, there was a pool of blood and that was all. It was forbidden to say even a word. The men were led away to the zone and we went on. It was very frightening. We cried. We prayed. And we walked into the unknown. We walked for a whole week. We slept along the road to the camps. There were people there in these camps, but we never saw them.
Finally, we arrived in our camp, which was called Kon’iaki. There had never been anyone in this camp before us. The head of the camp greeted us well. He said, “ Get settled. Tomorrow you will go to pick swede. The swede plants are still very small, but growing thick. If you can, then gather and eat them. And if there is enough of it to make small sacks, take it, because I have nothing else, no provisions, no clothing.” At breakfast we would be given a small piece of bread – 14 ounces. It was such a small piece of almost raw dough. Sometimes there would be soup made from some dead, fetid fish. I could not bear the smell and did not go into the mess hall. I lived on just hot water and a small piece of bread, oh, and on this swede.
But most frightening of all were these midges. They blocked out the sun. There was no rescue from it. We were given pants with a string to hold them up and shirts. Some man brought us buckets of tar. We rubbed it on our face, hands, and legs. We made crowns from grass for our head and also poured tar on it. But all of this did little to save us. I was very weak. I couldn’t manage. The whole time I fell behind. The convoy guard put four sticks in the ground to make a border, which it was forbidden to cross.
Later the swede grew quite large. The convoy guard that led us were old men. Sometimes we would approach the field where the swede was. We would walk in rows of five. The convoy guard would say, “ Brigade, get in two lines. March quickly to the swede. Take as much as you can.” And when we arrived at the work site, there was the command, “ Sit. Eat the swede.” We would begin to eat. “And now, sing.” We would sing and then in one voice, we would cry. The command, “Stand!” And back to work. Towards fall, after we had harvested the crops, we again were sent back by foot to the main camp in Taishet.
We arrive in Taishet. There is a men’s camp. God, how thin and horrible they were. We would go into the mess hall. We were given soup and the men would surround us and beg, “Perhaps you will not eat it all?” How can you eat when a person stands there starving. We gave it away to them. We, after all, are more enduring than men.
In Taishet, there was a very large transit camp – thousands and thousands of prisoners, exhausted, sick, hungry, and tattered, like shadows. A transport of prisoners was gathered, then we were loaded again in cattle cars and sent no one knew where. We were brought to the Mariinski camps, Kemorovskaia Oblast, to a transit camp seventy kilometers outside the city. This was late fall 1945. Again there was a sorting. This procedure was always very difficult. We were kept outside while everyone, all their documents and sentences were reviewed, regardless of the weather. We were all so ragged and thin that our clothes nearly fell off.
We, hard laborers, strict regimers, Article 58ers, were kept separately. We were taken in trucks with 30 people and 3 soldiers, through the steppe, all uninhabited, and then suddenly there’s a camp. “Merchants” - those who will select us according to our ability for work, fat-bellied brass of various ranks, were awaiting us already. We, women, really just children, and elderly women were taken. This was a large strict regime camp. How many victims it held is unknown. For the women there was a very long barrack, divided into sections, and fenced off. The barrack was enclosed by a high fence. The men were separate.
The first week was still favorable. It was still warm and we were sent to dig up potatoes. The potatoes were large, but forage, not suited for food. They were intended for processing and the brewing of alcohol. We did not look very bad because during the summer we had gotten a little stronger. But within a week it became sharply colder. Snow fell. Freezing cold. Blizzards began that continued constantly. The camp did not have any communication with the outside world. We were no longer let out anyway, because we were completely unclothed. We had nothing - practically no clothing. And the whole winter we were kept in the zone in the camp. We lay on the bunks the whole time. For a week or more there would be no bread, no salt. The food was prepared without salt from frozen potatoes, cabbage and rotting herring. The food was brought in metal cans from the men’s zone. It was brought under the gate, “Take it.” But we were not let out.
We would ask, “And the bread?”
“There is no bread.” And again we went back on the bunks.
We reached the point that we were suffering dystrophia. We were horrible to look at, like ancient old women. I was even more frightening than I am now. Young girls were like real old women. When we were weighed in the spring, I was 83 pounds. It looked like you could play the accordion on my ribs. So those were the first eight months we spent in the bunks. This was in the camp seventy kilometers from Mariinsk. It was called Novoivanovka, but people called this place the Valley of Death or the Devil’s Canyon. For many months terrible blizzards blew and therefore, nothing was brought in. And the locals had no reserves.
There were two sisters, Elena Arsent’ievna and Marfa Arsent’ievna Marchenko, from Dnepropetrovsk in the barrack with us. Both were doctors. They worked in the men’s zone. They told us what was happening in the men’s zone. It was a complete hospital. There were typhus, dysentery, and tuberculosis epidemics. People were dying not by the tens, but by the hundreds. Our barrack stood on a rise and we could observe from the upper bunk. Every day we saw vehicles, loaded with the bodies of people, just like wood, not covered with anything. At the guardhouse, the vehicles were stopped and thoroughly searched so that no one alive had hidden in there.
For many months we lived completely cut off from the whole world. No one saw even a scrap of newspaper, or even ordinary paper. Of course, correspondence was not allowed. Even the camp officials had to post messages on small, well-cleaned boards. We passed the time in prayer. We often sang. And everything ended in tears. Conversations were more remembrances of childhood or about food which our mothers had prepared. We shared recipes, which we made a note of in our head. And there was always the hope for release.
In the summer they began to gather us, the very youngest for transport. But now few remained. Therefore there were now very few to choose from, perhaps a hundred people. Again we were taken through the Mariinskaia transit camp, where we were joined with other camps and brought to a transit camp in Krasnoyarsk. We lived there for three months. Again a medical exam, roll call, and various manipulations. We were all recounted and re-examined because no one passed the health exam. They tried to pick out the healthy for Norilsk. The Norilskii region was to the far North and completely uninhabited. There were Arctic nights there – six months of night, six months of day. But none of us were sent there. We again returned to our old master. We returned to Mariinsk for a second year. And again we did not work the whole winter. Such was our story.
Towards spring they began to give us clothing – old felt boots, torn and dirty pea-coats, filthy padded pants. It was clothing from the dead. Everything was so soiled, we cried. We sobbed when they gave us this clothing. It was terrible to look at, but to wear it on your bare body? But there was no other way. Weak and morally debased, we were led out to prepare the earth under the greenhouse. It was still a long time till it would be warm.
They started to form brigades of thirty. We were called out by number. When my number was called, I ran. But my felt boots were torn and damp. I slipped and fell and broke my arm. I was sent back to the zone. A splint was put on and I was left. During this fall I severely bumped my head. I vomited. It was clear that I had a concussion, but no one paid attention to this. So for a month I wore this splint. Then the doctor, a Georgian, came. He checked me. I still could not wiggle my fingers normally, but he discharged me as healthy.
Again I was sent back to the brigade, but I still could not work. How famished and weak we were! The convoy guards led us far from the zone to a field for potatoes. We gathered these frozen potatoes. We made flat cakes without salt, without anything. And we fried them on a sheet of metal on a fire. The soldiers also ate them with us. Not everyone was taken to this work site – some were lucky and happy. We cooked these flat cakes, but you could not, after all, do it just for yourself. You still needed to carry them to those who could not go out to work. But when you approached the guardhouse, they performed a search. If the guards found these flat cakes on someone, then they threw them out. One of the guards, his name was Lemeshko, had many small children. Also ragged, they grabbed these flat cakes and ran away. Everyone was hungry.
In the spring we again were gathered for transport – this time from the Mariinskaia transit camp to the 60th kilometer, to peat, to bog. We were brought to the camp. It was similar to an island, with large, deep, and wide trenches filled up with water, dug around it. Recidivists had been in the zone before us. They lived there according to their own laws. Before we were supposed to arrive, they had bet the orderly and killed him. In the barrack there was a puddle of blood. We washed all of this. We scraped it clean with pieces of glass. So we began to make it habitable. On the next day we began work digging peat. A machine dug and cut it into pieces and we dragged these pieces out of the water, laid them out, and dried them. It was very hard. Everyone was exhausted. Everyone was weak. The majority were ill with night blindness. It was very difficult. We had no communication with our families. We worked there until it was cold. And again we were returned to Novoivanovka, to the Valley of Death. And again everything was the same. There was the same harsh winter. Why was it necessary to torment us so? What was the thought behind this? Even now it’s not understandable.
We were saved because we were all under the same article, Article 58, and we were held separately from everyone. This was very good that we were not mixed with common criminals – thieves and rapists. At the transit camp I saw many of our people who had been sentenced to ten years. Their regime was easier, but not much. For example, they could work in their specialty, if it was suitable. The main specialties in the camp were cobbler and tailor. Among us Ukrainians, there were tailors and cobblers. They noticed that we were so unfortunate and they decided to help whomever they could with what they could, whomever needed something more. They repaired shoes for one, a jacket for another, or pants – in a word, they helped us.
In the summer of 1948, we went to work in the greenhouse where tobacco grew. We took care of it and gradually tore off leaves, hid the leaves on ourselves, and if we managed to bring it into the zone, then we gathered it all together and gave it to our doctors, who gave it away to the men.
Towards autumn we again were gathered, young, old, and sick, for transport. Again they took us and again we did not know where. We were brought to Vanino Bay near Vladivostok. We were settled in a transit camp. Tents stood there. And the transit camp was so well-maintained, clean, paths made from stone, wooden sculptures from tree stumps – it was unbelievable. It seems that Japanese POWs had lived there. After the camps in which we had been in, we stared in wonder at everything there, to see such cleanliness, order, with beds of flowers and even sculptures. All fall we lived in this transit camp. Of course, no one told us anything, nor explained. What would happen further with us, we did not know. There was roll call three times a day and very, very meager food.
1948 – practically the whole country is behind barbed wire. We, it turns out, were brought to Berlag. Still more people had become enemies of the people. Many slaves were needed. The country needed precious metals and wanted to get it without any outlay. For a mere ladle of broth and a ration of bread they had laborers. Stalin gave authority over the prisoners to Beria - and so Berlag appeared. Kolyma, Norilsk, Kamchatka, Chukotka, Komi USSR, and all of Siberia were white spots. People perished from the hard work, hunger, cold, and unsanitary conditions. New enemies of the people were found and the dead were replenished with the living. Beria tightened the regime even more. Prisoners became completely undefended. They decided to carry all political prisoners farther from the world, from outside eyes. And all of the youth and us from the Mariinskaia camp, and all of Siberia began to be taken away by transport. The transports were very large, full of both men and women, if you could call them people. Transport was a horrible ordeal, such persecution – the soldiers with their bayonets and dogs, the role calls, the taunting.
Suddenly, at the end of October, we began to receive clothes. Everything was new – pea-coats, padded cotton pants, a pair of underwear, felt boots, hat with ear flaps, padded cotton mittens. How glad we were! Everything was new. We had not worn nor seen anything like it for how many years.
On October 25, we were loaded on the ship ‘Nogin’. It was dark in the holds, damp and dirty. There were bunks everywhere. We were transported worse than cattle. The sea at this time of the year was not calm, but stormy. Everyone vomited. Everyone was sick. No one could eat. Water fell into the hold up to the knees. We lay side-by-side on the high bunks tightly pressed against each other. Many did not live to reach their assigned place. One saving grace was prayer. We did not part with prayer. On the twelfth day we arrived and found out that we were in Kolyma, in Nagayevo Bay. IT was the 7th of November - a holiday. The country celebrated. We were kept in the holds. On the 9th of November they began to unload us. The ship had been completely filled, they had sent practically everyone with varying sentences under Article 58.
Awaiting us were many camp bosses and soldiers with dogs. There were tables with records. Everyone was terribly exhausted, only half alive, foremost the women. There was a deep freeze, wind, and snow. The transport was so large that it was impossible to unload everyone in one day. We were recounted and led in groups on foot for sanitary processing, and then to a transit camp. We were always called by formula, then counted again and again, then sanitary processing. Your things were steamed for a sanitary processing treatment. Among the Article 58ers, there were not only those of us assigned to hard labor, but also those assigned to corrective-labor camps, who had ten year sentences. It is horrible to recall the humiliation that we had to endure, while men, with medals on their shoulder straps, stood looking at us, naked, like things, suitable or unsuitable.
Then we went on foot to the Fourth Kilometer camp. We walk. We fall. We are driven on. We reached the camp at night. Again we were re-counted in the barrack. In the morning reveille. We were re-counted. Those of us assigned to hard labor were sorted out and put in a special, new barrack with a high fence, a second zone within the zone. The bunks were damp. There was no floor, just frozen ground. There were stoves made from barrels with diesel and a special barrel for our needs. The barrack was on a large hill. They brought us food to eat and took it all away when we were done. Everyone slept on the upper bunks, huddling close to each other so as not to freeze. A sheet was all that covered us. We were kept that way until spring.
At the end of May they began to deliver us to the camps along the trassa, the road leading off into the interior. Those of us doing hard labor were sent to Butugichag to the camp Vakhanka. Only those doing hard labor were kept there. It was an enormous camp with people of various ages, but in general not very old. The camp was a strict regime camp, a uranium mine. We all wore numbers. We were all the same, all gray. Our group, because we were sentenced to hard labor, was one of the last. In 1948 the hard labor sentences were eliminated and people were sentenced to corrective labor camps instead, but still for twenty-five years, plus five years loss of political and civil rights, and five years exile. There were many of my fellow country-men there. Numbers were slapped on us and we were no longer people. We were letters and some numbers. My number was M-323. I met girls who had been brought there back in 1945. Many different kinds of people were there – academics of various specialties, simple workers, nuns and priests. There were many foreigners. How ragged, hungry, and worn out we all were!
There was an ore concentration factory at Vakhanka. Here they jigged tin. Butugichag – these were uranium mine hills. Women worked in these mines. They sent the stones with ore down in little wagons to the crushing station. A narrow-gauge rail had been built and the ore was delivered in little wagons to Vakhanka. Then it was again sent down to another crushing station, which processed it into smaller stones. All this was pulverized into sand and then mixed with water, and then the sand with water fell onto tables. Women did all this. It was the most difficult work, especially at the crushing station. The din, the dust! You do not see one another or hear one another. We were sent to different jobs, mostly in ore processing, but also to cut timber and to the electric power station for firewood, and to many other jobs. Women did it all.
When we arrived at Vakhanka, we were assigned to a barrack. It was already sunny and warm. In accordance with the law, the head of the camp comes to “look over the goods.” They ask if there are any complaints, how they are feeding us. Many said, “Good, boss.”
But I go and say, “It’s bad. What they give us is rotting and stinky.” He began to write and then they left. Suddenly, the duty officer comes and summons me to the front of the ranks. And I am given three days and nights in the internal camp prison for what I said. This was a cold, damp, cell. I caught a cold. I got a fever and was put in the hospital. During this time, my group was sent to cut timber.
Here it is true what they say - that fortune is born out of misfortune. This was fortunate. The ore processing is not logging. The hospital saved me from that. But it did not happen that I could lay for long. They checked me the whole time. I was discharged and in the beginning sent to do light work – to carry water. There were two of us. A lot of water was needed. Carry, heat, cut fire wood. Then for the winter I was sent to this same factory where the metal is separated from the sand. There were five of us. We were supposed to jig 4 pounds of metal from sand of barren rock. I often was sick. The girls felt sorry for me and supported me. I remember everything. I will be grateful to them my whole life. I remember.
It was not easy there with the icy water and dampness, but nevertheless it was inside and there was steam heat. But when there wasn’t enough firewood and the factory was unheated, no one thought about us. Damp and wet, they’d order – “Get dressed and into the vehicle and into the forest for firewood.” The temperature often hit -58° f. We would be freezing and we’d pray. We’d pray that it would be -63° f. on the thermometer. Then the day would be cancelled. The supervisor would also be freezing along with us. He’d measure the temperature. And we wouldn’t be taken out to work.
The ore processing factory is in this big open space, partitioned off with barbed wire, with watchtowers all around, and convoy guards. Your group number was summoned to leave the zone. Everyone stands in formation, in lines of five. The convoy guard does a roll call and then says ‘the prayer’ – “Brigade, form up, arms back, head down. A step to the left, a step to the right, we shoot without warning.” We were afraid to sneeze. After every two rows there was a guard with a bayonet and a dog. You walk. Your nose is running, but you are afraid to move your hand. They saw everything and if they saw something, then they would immediately command, “Lie down!” They could order us to lie down in the swamp or the mud. If you didn’t manage to lie down, they shot and killed you.
In the zone reveille is at 6:00 am. The duty officer comes. We form up to go to the mess hall. We form up coming from the mess hall. We form up all day long. Someone was not counted, get up and outside, form up. In the winter we froze. After all, we had slept in our damp pants. They got us up often, sometimes several times in one night. Or they got it into their heads to check our cases against the records. They would lead us out at night in the cold, even if there was a blizzard, together with our things. And the soldiers would begin to rip up the boards on the bunks and on the floor. They’d perform a search. It was a long procedure as they went through everything. And then they counted us again. And so on the whole night. And then it was morning and we had to go off to work. This inhumane regime was the most oppressing.
We all prayed quietly to ourselves, because it was forbidden to do otherwise. We believed. We hoped. And so the years passed.
There was no rest in the zone, ever. They found work for us all the time. It was necessary to go to the burnt hill for Japanese stone pine or to cut firewood in the zone. The most awful was when you came back from work, tired and hungry, it’s night, and the head of the camps stands there and sends you back to the hill to find burnt Japanese stone pine from under the snow for firewood and to carry it to the storehouse. Then the free settlers from the village take it all at night. In the morning there is nothing to prepare lunch with. The barracks need to be heated. Again we’re chased out at night. Or they’d say to the sick, whom they had given a sick day, “You work half the day, then be sick.”
The brigades which stockpiled the firewood for the camp, if they didn’t fulfill the quota, were brought in from work, given food, and then sent, damp and wet, into the lock-up. They spent the night there, rose, were herded into the mess hall to eat the 10.5 ounces of bread they were given, and then marched off on foot to work. It was ten kilometers. Those who broke the rules found themselves in this brigade. And just what does breaking the rules mean – she said something, someone informed on her, she was sick and did not go to work, or her number was dirty or she didn’t manage to sew it back. And off you go into the brigade of rule-breakers.
Can you imagine - you walk and sleep on the move. We walked and slept. We even dreamed. We looked like sluggish old women, our faces burned by the frost and the wind. Our skin was cracked, worse than an eighty-year-old’s.
Very often there were blizzards. The roads were covered with snow drifts of great heights. The factory came to a halt then and everyone was sent to clear the snow. The snow was always compressed. We cleared it in small stages. The last woman threw the snow back farther from the road. It happened that the road was only opened in the spring, when navigation opened. This road went through the mountain pass, Podumai. In the spring the whole camp was driven out to clear the road. The road was long. The sun at this time of the year shines strong. It radiates strong ultraviolet rays. While we walked, we all were blinded. They made glasses for us out of gauze, dyed with manganese or greens, but this did not help. We had burns on our eyes, but there was no mercy. The road needed to be opened. Vehicles needed to transport the metal.
In the winter, we carried sacks of metal on our shoulders to the hill where the narrow gauge railroad ran – sacks with exactly 110.23 pounds of ore. We walked, clinging to each other, in groups of threes. God forbid, don’t damage the sack, all under seal. And this work is beyond your strength, especially for such emaciated people. Everything could have been different. But this was a special regime. Everything was devised for the extermination of people.
It was that way until the death of Stalin. What happened here when his death was announced? The ‘patriots’ cried, “The Father was no more! What will happen now?” They walked around and sniffed around and reported who said what, who reacted how. Many people were put in lock-up during those days.
After Stalin’s death, the regime became a little softer. Our numbers were removed. Sliced bread, a lot of bread, appeared on the tables in the mess hall. We were assured that it would be like this from now on. They began to cook better. We were led by convoy guards, but now without weapons or dogs. Our hands were freed. Most importantly, the head of our camp, Khomutov, was removed. An account was set up for each person. We began to earn some money. A kiosk appeared in the zone. It was possible to buy some provisions. We earned little, of course. And they deducted for food. But twice a year it was possible to send twenty rubles home. I found my parents in exile in the city, Molotov, Permskaia oblast. And I sent them money. How surprised they were! Where did it come from?
No one spoke officially about an amnesty. Free workers, who also worked with us at the factory, told us that we would be freed soon. We hoped.
In 1954 work at the factory began to be cut back. We were taken to Staraia Veselaia in Magadan. From there we were brought in trucks to the brick factory. How many people perished there! How many became invalids! All of Magadan at that time was composed of camps. Guard towers stood all around.
In the spring of 1955 it was announced that we could go without convoy guards. We were transferred to the auxiliary farm at the 2nd kilometer near Magadan. From there we were sent to Serdiak to cut hay. We worked there the whole summer. We celebrated the New Year in 1956 there. I remember that on New Year’s Day there was a thunderstorm and rain. After New Year’s we were brought again to Magadan to the second part to the camp. There was a horse stable there. Girls shoveled the waste products from the public houses and took it away on horse and carts to the field.
And at this time they now began to release people. I was released in the month of March, 1956. I remember the fear and confusion we experienced after being released. After eleven years of camps, I no longer knew anything. I was unaccustomed to everything. I could not imagine how I would live further. It seemed to me that I did not know anything at all about life. Yes, that is how it was in fact. Just the vestige of the camps on me and nothing more, as if there had been no life before that.
When the official, who gave out documents, asked me where I was going, I began to cry and said that I did not know anything. He offered me to come to his home, to his family, and to be a nanny for his young child. His wife had to go out to work. I agreed. They lived at 22 Lenin Street in a communal apartment. I slept in the kitchen. But I was lucky. They were wonderful people – Pavel Pavelovich Popov and Polina Ivanovna. The daughter, Tamara, was one month old. In the beginning I was afraid, but I adjusted and managed. They treated me well, and I them. Pavel Pavelovich suggested that I continue my studies. I went to evening school. Later a good acquaintance helped fix me up with a job as a medical orderly on the ambulance squad. It was difficult then to find work, especially for those of us who had sat in prison.
At this time a one year nursing course opened. I went to study further. Later I finished a two year program. I was switched to a nursing position. Later I was sent for a residency in the oblast hospital and then worked as a doctor’s assistant. And then for thirty years I worked on the ambulance squad. I went on my pension from there.
My husband also served time here in the Magadan camps. We met after we had already been released. I did not think anything, but we started to meet. And so we remained together. We lived very well. Of course, the camps told on his character and on his nerves. But we got along. He was a very thoughtful husband. He always felt sorry for me and helped. He worked at the bread factory, first as an electrician, then as a mechanic.
We had a child, a son. We lived for a long time in a barrack in a small, nine square meter room. We were very poor. For a whole year after our son was born, we took care of him in turn. Then with the help of good people, I enrolled my son in a day care. It was very difficult to do this then. I remember how my son could not wait for my day off. I also remember how coming home from day care, he pretended to turn on the faucet and sputter as if water was running. How he wanted water to come from these faucets, but there was no water. We had to carry in water, along with firewood to stoke the stove, in order to wash. It was very hard.
Later we were given a room at 8 Gorky Street. We lived there for fifteen years. Our son, Volodia, left for the army from there. And we were given this apartment in which I live now. My son returned from the army in November, and in March his father passed away. He was fifty-two years old. And I remained alone with Volodia. Within a year he married. My son is from God. I have never heard a rude word from him. He has never offended me, never!
In our family there was a strong religious upbringing. All of my family were deep believers from time immemorial from our grandfathers and great-grandfathers. I remember how my grandmother prayed, and how strictly she observed all fasts. She knew all her prayers by heart. When we were little, she put us on our knees to pray together with the grown-ups. We had to repeat all our prayers with them. We all observed the commandments. Grandmother read the Holy Bible to us and taught us. Both father and mother and we children were all raised in the faith. I believe that only prayers helped me to stand my ground when I ended up in the camps. Only, because we preserved our faith!
How we prayed in the cells during the interrogations! In camp it was strictly forbidden. You could only say prayers to yourself, inside yourself. Well, when we were held there in Novoivanovka, there we were completely isolated from the world. When it was Sunday, we prayed. We performed the Sunday liturgy. There were also Russians with us there, who, on the whole, were non-believers. They did not participate, but they liked to watch and listen as we sang and prayed.
When we were brought here to Vakhanka, we prayed in our hearts under the blanket and on the road to work. You are walking and you are praying. Of course, prayer saved us. I firmly believe this. And I thank the Lord that he heard our prayers. There was a time in camp when it seemed that it was impossible to just survive. You’d address the Lord in such despair! And help always came. We found people who helped in times of trouble, with at least something. Such support was necessary. We obtained help through prayer. We were saved only through prayer. And now I am still saved through them.
We are victims of a communist regime. I never wished anyone evil. Even now I do not know whom I should forgive. Lord, I am thankful for my faith that helped me to survive this.