Remembering a scorched childhood: Salaspils concentration camp
Sinking further and further, time takes us away from the events of 1941–1945. They draw back, covered with the patina of the past years. But among us there remain those for whom war, occupation, fascists are not abstract concepts, but pages of their own biography. Their stories are crucial for us to remember over what an evil that victory was gained.
Roza Sergeyeva worked at SPbGASU for 36 years as chief power engineer. When the Great Patriotic War began, she was three years old. Rosa’s childhood was scorched by terrible events: a three-year-old girl, she and her younger sister went through the trials of a concentration camp. Here is her story.
Roza Sergeyeva
– I was born in the city of Luga near Leningrad. My father was an officer, a tanker. My mom, Nadezhda Maslova, took care of the household and us, children: me and my one-year-old sister. We lived in a military township.
Straight away after the outbreak of the war, my father was summoned to the front, and my mother and I stayed. The events developed quickly: the Red Army retreated with battles, and on August 27, 1941, the Germans were already in the city of Luga.
My mother tried to leave for Leningrad, but failed to do this with two small children. She recalled: “We went towards Leningrad and approached the Oredezh river. I swam well and would cross this river. But I couldn’t do this with you. Therefore, we turned back and returned to Luga”.
“The Germans captured us in Luga” recalls Rosa Matveevna. - My mother Nadezhda was Russian, and my father was a Jew. Mom said that at first the Germans wanted to send us to Germany. They forced us into freight railway cars, my mother, my sister and me, along with other people. The train was bombed, and we managed to escape; we were roaming through the forests for two years. It was terrible - fear, hunger, bombing. We ended up at a Latvian farm, but the Germans caught us after all and put us in the camp, which was part of the infamously known Salaspils concentration camp.
I was three, but I remember well our life in a concentration camp. Children were separated from adults. My sister and I ended up with other children in a children's barrack. It had an earthen floor, sometimes flooded with water. There were bunks built of round timber with something was thrown onto them, and there we slept. This barracks were guarded by the Germans; we could not get out of it. My mom was kept in another barrack, and we rarely saw her. Adult prisoners were forced to dig trenches. We were children, sitting in a hut and chatting. I was hungry all the time. They fed us with balanda: this was just water in which the vegetable cleanings floated. We had only one joy: we listened to the rumble of airplanes and distinguished the sound of Soviet cars. When the Soviet plane flew over, we screamed, laughed, jumped.
I remember well one of the Germans who guarded us. He cut us toys from wood: horses, dolls, flowers, and we played with them. When my sister got sick, he brought her some pills. Later, when we were rescued, it turned out that I was sick too - I had focal tuberculosis. In a cold barrack, it was virtually impossible not to get sick; in addition, my sister and I suffered with dystrophy from hunger. We lived in a concentration camp for two years.
I clearly remember the day when the Soviet troops liberated us. The huge gates of the concentration camp opened wide, we were released, and we all, adults and children, ran away. There was a terrible crowd, we could understand nothing, but we all were happy, laughing. German warehouses got opened that day. And we, the children, ate there sweets and biscuits. And after the famine in which we had been held, this should not be done, and after that my sister and I got badly sick. Since then I have never eaten either starchy of sweet food.
Our mom found us, and we returned to Luga. Again, we were going by freight cars. I remember how we went to our house and saw that it was in ruins. There was no more house any more.
Then some people came in a car and started offering places to stay, some housing. We ended up near Priozersk, where my mother got a job in accounting.
Our dad got safely through the entire war, ending it in the Far East during the defeat of Japan. But he never returned to us, because he already had another family. Our father and mother broke up.
We had a hard life; mother raised us by herself. After the war, even basic things were lacking, the country was devastated. When my sister and I went to school, we had to write on newspapers: there was no other paper. But neither I nor my sister were really concerned with the difficulties, we were children. At that time everyone lived very poorly, but there were joys in this life too.
Later we moved to the village of Mozhaysk (Duderhof), which then became a district of Leningrad, and then to Leningrad itself, where we lived in a communal apartment on Bronnitskaya Street. I graduated from the Electrotechnical College, got married, as did my sister.
Mom never talked to us about the time spent in the concentration camp. She never remembered anything about the war and occupation. Years passed, but these are tough memories for me even now.
Text: Elena Shulgina