Tag #150456 - Interview #97031 (Efim Geifman)

She stayed in Kiev during occupation and was taken to Germany in 1942. She fell ill and was put in a civil hospital near Dresden. After she recovered she became a cleaning woman in this hospital. She met a German anti-fascist girl. They listened to the news from Moscow, and then Galina sent this information to Ukrainians in a work camp.  On the eve of 1943 she was arrested and sent to the prison in Dresden. They beat her demanding to tell the names of the people she was in touch with. They sentenced her to death, but instead they sent her to the penal block in Ravensbruck. Penal prisoners had a target painted on the chest and on the back. One step aside was punished by shooting. Galina read a lot before the war. And in the camp at the end of a hard work day she retold these novels to prisoners. She enjoyed doing it. Her Czech friends had access to the card-files. They replaced her card with a dead person’s card and sent her to work at the Wolfen factory under a different name. This was a large chemical enterprise, a department of the Buchenwald camp. On 17 April 1945 the camp was eliminated and the people sent for extermination. She ran away on the way there and happened to get into the disposition of the Soviet army. She went trough an appropriate check up procedure and got a job in this same commandant’s office where I was. She was an accountant.