Eyewitness Testimony Tonja Demjantschuk-Schalapaj

Questionnaire International Organization for Migration (IOM) Questionnaire International Organization for Migration (IOM) “Tonja” Demjantschuk-Schalapaj Questionnaire: 1. I was born on June 13, 1929, in Godowichi (Volhynia), Ukraine. Our family consisted of: father, mother, and three children; I was the youngest. My father was a scientist, my mother – a beauty. We lived in prosperity, our parents loved us and always treated us well. They were very good. 2. It happened back in June 1944, at a time when shells were exploding everywhere, the earth was mixed with the sky and everything was burning. We were then on the front line. We were at home at that time and to survive, we had to hide in the basement; the only food we could eat then was potatoes. Everything we owned, all our belongings were burned. Two stables with all the livestock, our house with all the things inside, including icons and knitted items, were burned. After that, we only had what we were wearing. Exactly at that time, they caught us and put us into the dirty wagons. 3. We got into the wagons that were only suitable for transporting livestock. It was dirty, stuffy, and smelled unbearable there. By July, we were in Kahla (I note that I am sending you my papers (documents) along with the completed questionnaire, in which everything is stated. Also about the camp that I described to you in the letter. I am sending you the letter as well). 4. From the beginning, people were abused: women and children had to do all kinds of work, men worked in tunnels where airplanes were produced. 5. Yes, we were first brought to one camp and after some time we were transferred to another. The second was located right next to the first, it was nice there – trees, meadows... Why we were transferred I do not know. 6. The living conditions in both camps were the same: multi-family barracks and the “rutabaga soup.” 7. I think there were such small cast-iron stoves in the middle of each barrack, but whether they worked and who took care of them only God knows. If you can call these rags blankets, then we had blankets and everyone who had such a “blanket” was lucky. Often one family separated itself from another with such a “blanket.” 8. No one gave us uniforms, so we wore what we still had from home. 9. In the morning, it was one slice of bread divided among four, in the evening – “soup” made from rutabagas. Maybe conditions changed for other people, but I cannot say that anything improved for us. I still remember an incident that happened to my father and my sister. Once we dug pits all day and at the end of the day they drove us to the tunnel, from which our exhausted, pale, hungry men came out after work. There were hundreds of them. Outside, in front of the tunnel, kettles with the “soup” were set up. Men had to line up at the kettles and receive their “soup” in turn. Some women from our group, including my sister, had to serve the “soup.” When our pale, exhausted father was next, she poured him two ladles of this dishwater instead of one, although it was said that everyone was allowed only one ladle. A German guard saw this, knocked the bowl out of her hands, shouted at my sister for a long time and beat her with a whip. 10. We worked all day long, from early morning until night, the beginning and end of each day was signaled by a siren. The mountain under which airplanes were produced could be seen from the camp. We women were not allowed there, men were brought there under supervision. 11. Sirens howled. 12. Our daily workload was what we were told we had to do. It had to be done regardless of size. Since a German guard always supervised us, we had no other choice. They drove us and constantly shouted at us. They were certainly all swear words. We began to forget how to speak and smile, all we still knew was WORK. We were always dirty and unkempt. 13. The Germans who supervised us treated us very badly and degradingly, but we had the impression that they had orders from above to behave that way. Questionnaire International Organization for Migration (IOM) 14. No one paid us and I have never heard anything about it. I have never seen that anything could be bought in the camp. This is the first time I hear anything about it. 15. Often, when it was already cold and the ground was frozen hard, we had to collect rutabagas in a field. 16. We could not write letters and did not receive any. I believe that the Poles could write home. Once I saw that they received zwieback from home. But they still died in large numbers, just like the Belgians. 17. No, we had no contacts and we did not know anyone from other camps. 18. All nations lived peacefully in the camp. I never saw prisoners arguing or fighting among themselves. We were united by the same fate, which made us feel close to each other, even related. We did not talk much to each other because none of us at that time could speak Italian or Belgian. 19. We talked with Poles or Russians because we could understand or speak those languages. We talked about the weather or about wanting to eat. We showed each other pus-filled sores or other diseases that appeared on our skin over time. We wished for a miracle to happen and for these Germans to disappear. We wished to get out of there alive. We wanted to live, we wanted to eat. 20. Yes, the camp where we were was a family camp. As I already said, we were all there together: father, mother, my sister, my brother, and I. 21. We were supervised only by Germans. I do not know how it looked in other camps. They supervised us, shouted and drove us on. You could feel that they had such an order. 22. I am not aware of any informers. 23. We got very little food. We always wanted to eat. We did not get letters or packages, no one gave us anything. We were starving. 24. I never saw a murder. But I saw when my sister was beaten by a German for an extra spoon of “soup,” just like Anja from Smolensk for a piece of rutabaga. I often saw people dying... It often happened that a person would go, then bend down to the ground and then die...25. I do not know if anyone in the camp was physically punished. Maybe someone was punished, but in a way that no one could see. I know nothing about it. 26. I did not see any German civilians as workers. The only Germans I could see were the soldiers who accompanied us to work daily and picked us up from work. They brought us to the camp, distributed the "soup," and we went to our barracks. There were no books either; we could not read anything. 27. No, we did not meet or know any German civilians. 28. While we were in the camp, we simply had no opportunity to meet civilians. At that time, only a few of us knew German, and we had nothing to trade with. 29. Somehow, I did not understand the question well. I would like to answer it but do not understand it. 30. There were certainly good Germans who treated the prisoners humanely and well, who helped them, but I know nothing about that. Good people exist in every nation; Germans are certainly good too. 31. Did people try to escape? I am not aware of such a thing. Maybe someone tried, but I know nothing about it. We did not try to escape at all. Where should we have fled? We did not know German, did not know the country, and therefore did not know where to flee or where to hide. Everything was foreign. Besides, our whole family was in the camp. 32. We had pus-filled ulcers on our skin and wounds on our lips, but we still did not go to the doctor because we did not see any during our time in the camp. 33. Many people died in the camp from hard labor and even more from hunger. I do not know if anyone was taken to the hospital or saved. No one from our family died in the camp. That only because we spent less than a year there; time saved us. If we had stayed longer, we would certainly all have died there. However, my father was swollen from hunger, developed kidney complications, and died shortly after liberation. I had some pus-filled ulcers and other skin diseases that suppurated for quite a long time but disappeared over time. After the war, I still went to school in Bamberg and Bayreuth. Questionnaire International Organization for Migration (IOM) 34. As soon as the rumor about Germany’s capitulation spread, all the Germans disappeared somewhere. From that moment, we had no more supervision, and then some families gathered to make a decision about what to do next and where to go. We decided to go to the nearest village and beg for food there. 35. We came to Bamberg, where Soviet and American troops were already present. The Americans found us. At first, we sat outside on the street for two days, then we were moved to an old house. Suddenly, thousands of people appeared. 36. The Soviet army demanded that the Americans hand us over to the Soviet side. We were told that we would be taken care of, but thousands of people still remained on the American side. Later, we were moved again, this time to the former military barracks, where we stayed longer. The Americans gave us food and used clothes. They allowed us to build a school and a church. In Bamberg, I started going to school. 37-39. We never returned to dear Ukraine because everything we owned there was burned down. We often remembered it, cried, and prayed. My mother, my father, and my siblings never saw Ukraine again; they died abroad. In 1992, I visited Ukraine for the first time after a long time. I fell to my knees and kissed the holy earth where our house stood; I prayed for my parents. This war cost 55 million good, innocent people. Millions of soldiers disappeared without a trace. Many people fell innocently; I bow my head to them. In my opinion, the unhappiest victims of the war were the Jews, and history must not conceal that. I wish that one day someone writes a historical account of all war crimes, of everything Hitler did; his deeds are cruel! I wish someone writes a story about it! I dream of erecting a monument to my parents in our village, at the place where our beautiful house stood. A monument with the inscription: "Here lived happily Ivan and Irina Demjantschuk." You, learned people, should work and write so that today’s generation knows how innocent people were abused. God bless you! Questionnaire International Organization for Migration (IOM) With respect, Tonja Demjantschuk-Schalapaj The Letter 16.02.2007 Dear Mr. Bartuschka, I have received your letter and accordingly the questionnaire, and I will gladly answer it. However, my answers will be in my mother tongue because it is easiest for me. I can read Russian well, but I write best in Ukrainian. So, as a minor girl, I was in these concentration camps near Kahla. These camps were numbered: 1, 2, 3. They were wooden barracks, small and dirty. Three to four families lived in each barrack. The landscape around Kahla is hilly; under one of these hills was an underground airplane factory. Only men worked there, including my father Ivan and my brother Igor. Women and children, including me, were forced to do other work. Every day was a new task, but most often we had to bury corpses. Often, in winter, when snow was already on the ground and the soil was frozen hard, we were driven to a field where we had to collect turnips and carry them in wheelbarrows to cellars. We were all very frozen, but hunger was even more unbearable for us than the cold. We wanted to eat. I remember well a case that happened to my acquaintance Anja. Anja was Ukrainian, but because she came from Smolensk, she mostly spoke Russian and only rarely Ukrainian. One day, this woman hid a piece of turnip in her bra, and a guard noticed it. He told her to take the turnip in her hand and stretch out her hand in front of her. She did so, and he hit her with a whip. The turnip fell out. We could not help her and worked bent over in tears. Questionnaire International Organization for Migration (IOM)Armed German guards drove us to work. We were treated humiliatingly and inhumanely, even though we were only women and children, innocent people who had done nothing to anyone. We had to get up early for the morning roll call, then we went to work under supervision. In the mornings, we received a slice of bread about the size of a toast as we make it nowadays. Back then, we had to divide this slice into four parts. In the evenings, we had dirty water from rutabagas, which was called "soup." Men were treated even worse. They were constantly driven under armed supervision with "quick, quick" and were even called "pigs." We were tormented by hunger. We wanted to eat. There were people from different countries in the camp: Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Belgians, Italians, and Jews. We all had to wear sewn-on patches on our chests. We had patches with the letters "OST," the Jews wore either the Star of David or a simple round patch. People often died like flies, as they do in autumn. The Belgians and Poles died the most, although the Poles sometimes received zwieback from Poland, and we Ukrainians, Russians, and Jews received nothing. Often we were driven into the cellar of a pub to sort out already rotten, stinking carrots. The air was very stuffy there. One wanted to eat these carrots, but we were not allowed because a German soldier was always watching us. The camp was fenced. The landscape outside the camp was particularly picturesque: the Saale River flowed by, and around the camp were forests and mountains. The Germans who now live there can certainly show exactly where this camp was located. I have never been there again, although I would very much like to visit this sad place to light a candle in the nearest church for those who died there. I do not know where their bones rest or if they are even buried. In 2000, I visited the holy places of Israel, prayed for myself and for those who died innocently back then... Dear Mr. Bartuschka, if it is already time to publish your work, I allow you to publish all my testimonies. Everything I have written to you, every single word of this letter is true. I have described my whole life from my youth to Germany... to Kahla. I intend to describe this period of my life in more detail. I have many unpublished poems that must be published. After the war, after the capitulation, I still went to school in Bamberg and Bayreuth. I write poems... I often think about everything that happened and cry... In the concentration camp, we were all together, our whole family was there. It consisted of five people: my father Iwan, my mother Irina, my sister Katrussya (Katarina), my brother Igor, and me, Tonja. I was the smallest in the family. From the first day of my life, I was always called Tonja. Tonja is the short form of Antonina; I was always called Tonja. When the time comes to publish your work and it perhaps comes to mentioning me, I ask you to mention me only as Tonja. After the capitulation, my father swelled greatly from hunger, developed kidney complications, and could not live much longer; he died shortly after liberation. At that time, none of my family was there. They had all already died. I myself grew up in England and have now grown old. My time will come soon too... I still remember well when we were driven to work one morning, I saw a man. He was Polish and still relatively young, but he died. None of the Germans paid any more attention to him, and he begged: "I am dying, please, write to my mother that I have died, let her pray for me..." This is my letter; you may use it very gladly. With respect to you and your work Tonja Demjanchuk-Schalapaj Tonja Demjantschuk-Schalapaj