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In February 1943 I worked at the stone quarry near Zaarbrukken in Western Germany. I became a member of an underground organization. We established contacts with German anti-fascists and French resistance. We began to receive some information about the situation at the front and it helped us a lot. We were crashing stones in the quarry and I remember a conversation with a German worker. I was talking with him when he seemed to have got lost in his thoughts. I asked him what he was thinking about and he said that he had recalled a Jewish girl that was torn by German dogs. He said she was a beautiful girl. There were different Germans. Sometimes they pushed weak workers into the quarry from a slope. Once a Ukrainian inmate (shoemaker Nesterenko from Poltava region) told me that he knew I was a Jew. I told him that I wasn’t, but the rumor about a Jew spread in the camp. The commandant of the camp interrogated all inmates, but Nesterenko didn’t betray me.
There were boxes with medications in the medical facility of the camp. I could read the names of medications and pretended that I knew what they were for. Nobody else in the camp knew anything about medicine and Germans believed that I was a medical professional and appointed me as a nurse. I kept steeling medications transferring them to the underground unit to help inmates that were ill. This lasted from the end of 1943 until 1945.
We, about 300 prisoners-of-war got free on 18 March 1945 and went to the Alps mountains. We had weapons and I became commander of battalion of former inmates of the camp. American units were moving in the Eastern direction and we met with them in Trier, Germany. (Editor’s note: where Karl Marx was born). We were all so happy about our victory. Americans treated us very nicely and arranged a reception in our honor. There was a professor from Philadelphia at the reception. He approached me and asked me whether I was a Jew, giving me a wink. There was commission for repatriation of Soviet citizens and the USSR Embassy in Paris. I got in touch with Paris requesting instruction my conduct in Trier and with Americans (Editor’s note: Soviet people could only contact or communicate foreigners upon obtaining permission from the Party and governmental officials). I was summoned to the Soviet Embassy in Paris. In Paris I met quite a few participants of French Resistance. I met a communist writer Elsa Triolet and her husband Louis Aragon. I also met Marcel Cashin who was the editor of the “L’Humanite” newspaper. On the eve of 1 May 1945 Charles de Gaulle, President of France, arranged a military parade and invited two Soviet battalions: one of them was the one under my commandment. The Communist Party of France awarded a medal with Stalin’s portrait to me. This was a special award for Soviet prisoners-of-war. I was also awarded a medal “de la Legion d’Honneur”. It vanished during a search that was conducted at my home in 1949.
There were boxes with medications in the medical facility of the camp. I could read the names of medications and pretended that I knew what they were for. Nobody else in the camp knew anything about medicine and Germans believed that I was a medical professional and appointed me as a nurse. I kept steeling medications transferring them to the underground unit to help inmates that were ill. This lasted from the end of 1943 until 1945.
We, about 300 prisoners-of-war got free on 18 March 1945 and went to the Alps mountains. We had weapons and I became commander of battalion of former inmates of the camp. American units were moving in the Eastern direction and we met with them in Trier, Germany. (Editor’s note: where Karl Marx was born). We were all so happy about our victory. Americans treated us very nicely and arranged a reception in our honor. There was a professor from Philadelphia at the reception. He approached me and asked me whether I was a Jew, giving me a wink. There was commission for repatriation of Soviet citizens and the USSR Embassy in Paris. I got in touch with Paris requesting instruction my conduct in Trier and with Americans (Editor’s note: Soviet people could only contact or communicate foreigners upon obtaining permission from the Party and governmental officials). I was summoned to the Soviet Embassy in Paris. In Paris I met quite a few participants of French Resistance. I met a communist writer Elsa Triolet and her husband Louis Aragon. I also met Marcel Cashin who was the editor of the “L’Humanite” newspaper. On the eve of 1 May 1945 Charles de Gaulle, President of France, arranged a military parade and invited two Soviet battalions: one of them was the one under my commandment. The Communist Party of France awarded a medal with Stalin’s portrait to me. This was a special award for Soviet prisoners-of-war. I was also awarded a medal “de la Legion d’Honneur”. It vanished during a search that was conducted at my home in 1949.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Rahmil Shmushkevich Biography