This testimony was written by Ekaterina Volkova between 1985 and 1987, two years before her death. For forty years, she remained silent about her experience at the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Here are her words.
“My name is Ekaterina Volkova. Everyone called me Katya. I am 71 years old. For most of my life, I acted as if the years 1942 to 1945 had never existed. I erased those years from my memory, like one gets rid of a burned photograph. But such memories are impossible to erase. They remain buried deep within, raw even when one puts on a smile. Now, knowing that I don’t have much time left, I must speak about what happened in the cellars of Ravensbrück. Not for myself, but for those who did not survive.”
For those whose names have been erased from the archives, whose bodies were cremated without ceremony, and whose voices have been silenced forever. This is my story, and it is also theirs. It was August 1942. I was 26 years old and a nurse in the Red Army. Our medical unit was captured near Smolensk after seven days of fierce fighting.
I saw comrades, female soldiers, shot down by the roadside simply for daring to wear the uniform. The Germans considered it “unnatural” for women. The punishment was immediate: a bullet to the back of the neck, without questions or trial. I survived this first ordeal thanks to an officer who noticed the Red Cross symbol on my torn uniform. He spared me. Sometimes I regret that he did.
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