“You’re too beautiful to die today” – Why did female prisoners prefer death at the hands of the Nazis?

“You’re too beautiful to die today” – Why did female prisoners prefer death at the hands of the Nazis?

Testimony of Elena Ivanovna Sokolova, recorded in St. Petersburg in 1999 year. She remained silent for 54 years about what she experienced in Smolensk, Minsk and near Warsaw during World War II war. These are her words. >> My name is Elena Ivanovna Sokolova. as I sit in my little apartment in St. Petersburg, I am 78 years old.

Outside the window 1999 year The city is preparing for winter and it’s cold the air reminds me of times, oh which I was silent for 54 years. Why did I decide to speak now? Probably because there was silence heavier than the truth itself. All these for decades I carried it inside me as a fragment that cannot be pulled out, not hitting the heart.

My children and grandchildren see me simply a quiet old lady who loves to bake pies and look out the window. But they don’t know the woman I was then. They they don’t know that Elena, whose scream froze in throat near Warsaw. I feel like time is running out and if I I won’t leave these words here, they will disappear along with me, turning into dust.

I want you to hear not only the history of the war, [music] and the history of how a man loses his soul by remaining at the same time alive. Before the war my life was simple and clear, like the clear sky above our village, near Smolensk. Arrived 1941 I was 19 years old. [music] Me was young, full of strength and, as they said surrounding, unusually beautiful.

Then I I didn’t attach any importance to this. My beauty was something natural for me [music] like the color of my hair or the shape of my hands. We lived in a small house, me, my parents and younger brother. My father worked for mill, and mother took care of the house and vegetable garden I remember the smell of fresh bread which spread in the morning, and the taste fresh milk.

That summer everything seemed especially bright. I was engaged to Alexey. Alexey was the kindest person I’ve ever known. He promised me that after the harvest we we’ll get married and he’ll build a new one for us house across the river. We were walking through the fields and he gave me cornflowers that matched to my eyes.

I remember his laughter and his strong hands. This was the life I understood. A life in which the most the scary event was bad weather or livestock disease. We didn’t think about politics we didn’t think about the world outside ours district. We just wanted to be together and raise children on this land. >> The war did not come immediately.

She crawled into our lives are rumors and alarming the looks of old people. And then on June 22 that’s it has changed. At first it was the rumble of airplanes, which We’ve never heard of it before. They were flying low, blocking the sun and their shadows slid across our fields like harbingers of death. The first bomb fell on the outskirts of the village in 3 days. I remember this sound.

It was not just an explosion, it was a crash, [music] with which our familiar world broke down. The smell of Harry and dust instantly replaced aroma of flowers. My Alexey went to the frontin the first week. I remember our last conversation at the gate. He hugged me so much that it became difficult for me breathe, and whispered that he would be back soon.

His eyes were full of determination, but deep down I saw fear. I’m more of him I’ve never seen it. A month later in our The Germans entered the village. These were the people in gray uniforms, on motorcycles and trucks. They looked at us not as people, but as for obstacles or for prey. We hid in the basements, but there was no silence saved.

They took livestock, food, [music] and then they started taking people away. My first real contact with horror happened in August. We were driven to central square. It was a hot day. Dust hung in the air, clogging my lungs. My friend Maria was grabbed by the hair right before my eyes for what she tried to hold on to her little sister.

A German soldier hit her with a rifle butt rifles in the face, and I heard a crunch bones. This sound still haunts me me at night. [music] Maria fell into the mud and the blood stained her light shirt in dark red color. Then for the first time I realized that there was no law, no more pity works. We were loaded into freight cars, intended for livestock.

It was inside so crowded that we could only stand. There was no water, no food, no air. We we drove for several days, and during this time two the old man in our carriage died. Their bodies continued to stand next to us because that there was nowhere to fall. The smell of death became our first satellite. We don’t knew where they were taking us, but there was fear so thick that it could be taste it.

bitter and metal. We were taken to a transit camp under Minsk. It was a huge field surrounded by barbed wire, where thousands of people were sitting right on the ground. Walked rain and the ground turned sticky gray dirt. We slept in this dirt huddled close to each other so as not to freeze.

It was there that I first saw Dr. Schultz. He carried out the selection. Schultz was a man of average height, a perfectly clean white robe, which seemed like blasphemy among this pus and sewage He walked slowly along the line women holding a thin cane in their hand. His the look was cold and appraising, like butcher at the market.

When he approached me, he stopped. I lowered my head, trying to become invisible, but his cane lifted mine chin. I was exhausted. My hair were confused, the face was covered with dirt, but eyes, [music] apparently there is still something of the old Elena remained. Dr. Schultz looked at me for a long time, and then he turned to the officer who was walking nearby, and said in broken Russian language phrase that changed my life forever.

You’re too beautiful to die today. At that moment I didn’t feel relief. [music] On the contrary, an icy cold ran through my back. I saw how he looked at Maria, who stood next to me,pale and trembling. He just waved hand to the side where stood those whom sent to the main camp area, [music] where death came quickly from hunger and bullets. And I was put out of action.

I was taken to a separate building where there was water and real food. [music] But I don’t could eat. I felt a traitor. I heard the screams of those who remained on field, and every sip of water seemed to me poison. That evening I was washed for the first time. Two women prisoners who worked in laundry, [music] silently rubbed my skin with stiff brushes until it becomes crimson. They didn’t look me in the eyes.

They knew what happened to those whom select for [music] top. I was dressed in clean dress, which apparently used to be belonged to some Polish or to a Russian woman whose fate has already been solved. It smelled like a chest and someone else’s grief. Sergeant Becker, a rude man with eternally red face, came for me in 2 hours.

He grabbed my elbow and dragged him to the car. Becker constantly grumbled something in his own language and angrily looked at me. I saw in him eyes of contempt. To him I was just a piece of meat that is delivered to the authorities. We drove along ruined roads Belarus, [music] past the burnt villages and gallows on the roadsides.

I I looked out the window and saw my country, [music] that turned to ashes. I I thought about my parents, about my brother, are they alive whether they are, or are no longer at home, like our world. There was fear of the future so great that I began to pray for death, but death seemed to bypass side of me, [music] attracted my beauty.

We arrived in the suburbs Warsaw late at night. It was big country villa surrounded by high fence [music] Centuries stood around trees, and in the moonlight this place would look great if not sentries and sheepdogs who barked for fence. Lights were burning inside the villa, you could hear music was playing something classical, It seems like bang.

This contrast between bloody mud of Minsk and graceful the setting [music] of the villa was unbearable. I was taken to a small room second floor. There was a bed with white sheets, a mirror and a window facing garden Becker pushed me inside and locked me door. I was left alone in this silence. I I walked up to the mirror and didn’t recognize myself.

On A woman with the eyes of an old man looked at me. My face was clean, my hair was combed, but inside I was dead. I sat down on the floor corner, not daring to touch the bed, and I was waiting. I was waiting for the person who bought my life for a phrase about beauty. Passed several hours before the door opens again opened.

A man in a general’s uniform entered the room. [music] form. It was Friedrich von Kleist. He was not like those sadists whom I saw in the camp. He looked like an aristocrat, with delicate features and well-groomed hands. He didn’t scream or hit me. [music] He came to the table and pouredsome wine and sat down in a chair, looking at me.

His gaze was searching, as if he looked at a rare butterfly pinned pin to the cardboard. He spoke to me in German, and when I realized that I didn’t I understand, I switched to French, and then in bad Russian. He said he appreciated beauty in all its manifestations and that [music] war is a rough craft, from which he wants to distract himself with.

His calmness frightened me more than Becker’s rage. In this calm there was not an ounce of humanity. For him I was not a person, [music] but a trophy, part of the interior of this villa. B he didn’t touch me that night. He’s just made me stand at the window and look into the garden while he was reading a book.

I stood there, afraid to move, and felt how my legs are going numb. The cold from the window glass penetrated through dress. [music] I thought about Maria, which was probably now lying on bare ground in Minsk and felt burning shame. My beauty that should was to be my gift, [music] became my cell.

I realized that here in in this clean house, they will do to me something that is much worse than a quick death from a bullet. They were going to take mine pride, my memory [music] and my right to consider myself part of my people. Von Kleist closed the book at about 4 a.m. and said that tomorrow I will have to accompany him to lunch with others officers.

He called me his little nightingale. I didn’t answer. I I just looked at my hands and saw them the invisible blood of all those who were not beautiful enough to stay in alive. This is how my life began in this gold captivity The system was set up so [music] to break me gradually. Came every morning a woman named Svetlana.

She was older than me, also a prisoner, [music] and worked in the kitchen and laundry. Svetlana was the only person who was talking to me. She she brought me food and helped me dress. Her eyes were always red from crying [music] but she tried to be strong. One day she whispered to me when Becker wasn’t there nearby. Hold on, baby.

If you If you survive, you will be able to tell them everything. We all count on you. These words have become my support. I realized that my life no longer belongs to me. She belongs to Maria, Alexey, my parents and all those who stayed there for barbed wire. I should have become witness, even if the price of this the evidence was unbearable.

Days merged into an endless series of humiliations. [music] I was forced to be present at receptions where German officers drank champagne and [music] laughed, discussing their victories at the front. They looked at I’m like an exotic animal. Some tried to talk to me others ignored, but they saw everything in me there is only a thing that belongs to the general.

Von Kleist loved demonstrate [music] me. Hemade me sing Russian folk songs when he had guests. I sang about fields, about love, about home, and every the word tore my soul. I saw how they applauded, not understanding what I was singing about their death, about the fact that our land will never accept them. At these moments I felt myself dirty woman in the world, but I continued to sing.

I sang so as not to go down crazy to remember the language and faces of those who I loved. They were especially scary moments when von Kleist fell into melancholy. He called me to him and forced me to listen for hours to his stories about his estate in Prussia, about his wife and children whom he had not seen for 2 years. He cried, burying his face in my hands.

And at those moments I felt for him not pity, but deep disgust. The man who gave the orders executions of thousands of people, sought consolation from the one whom he himself enslaved. This was the height of his madness. I stood motionless, looking at the wall, and I imagined this villa collapsing, burying us all under rubble.

I was waiting for the moment when I could strike him when I have enough strength to end this nightmare. But Becker always was there, watching my every gesture. One day Svetlana came to me with news that made my heart beat faster. She said that ours troops began an offensive near Moscow. It was December 1941.

The Germans are on Willie became more nervous. Music sounded less frequently, and shouting at subordinates more often. Von Kleist began to leave for meeting and come back late at night, angry and exhausted. One of these evenings he entered my room, tore the curtains from the windows and began shout that we are barbarians, that we are not we deserve the beauty that he trying to save.

He grabbed me by the shoulders and began to shake, demanding that I recognized his greatness. I was silent. I just looked at him eyes. And this time he saw in them not fear, not contempt. He hit me face. This was the first time he used physical force. I fell on floor, feeling the taste of blood in my mouth, and smiled. I smiled because I realized they began to be afraid.

My beauty is no more was a consolation for him. She became a reminder of the land he couldn’t conquer. The winter of 1941 was the harshest in my life. memory. The Villa started experiencing problems with heating. [music] I saw how German soldiers in the yard were wrapped in women’s scarves and looted fur coats. Their special blade, but at the same time their cruelty increased.

They began to take it out on us prisoners for their failures at the front. Svetlana beat up because she accidentally broke plate. I saw her face turned into a bloody mess, and my heart was bleeding. I tried to help her gave her portion of food, but Becker saw this [music] and deprived me of lunch for 3 day.

Hunger returned to me, reminding me of camp in Minsk. But this hunger was to others. It was cleansing.I felt that with every lost kilogram, with each new wrinkle on my face I become closer to mine, to to those [music] who suffer in the trenches and in occupation. My beauty began to be seen and it was my little triumph. Fonkleist called me less and less often.

He spent time in his office, surrounded by maps and telephone operators. [music] One day I overheard his conversation. He shouted into the phone about the lack of reserves, oh that these Russians are getting out of everyone’s way cracks. There was panic in his voice. [music] That night he came to me drunk.

He doesn’t talked about art, he just sat on edge of the bed and looked at me heavy, with a dull look. “Do you think you will win?” – he asked. “I didn’t [music] answer. You are the dust under our boots,” he croaked. But in his words there was no former confidence. He tried to hug me, but I pushed him away. It was madness.

I knew that I could be punished for this kill, but I didn’t care. He looked at me in surprise, then laughed a terrible dry laugh and walked out, slamming the door. I realized that the time of my stay on this villa is coming to an end. Life in a villa Warsaw at the beginning of 1942 became into a strange, frightening ritual. Arrived January, and the frosts were so cold that the birds froze on the fly.

Inside the house there was warm, the fireplaces were crackling, and it smelled expensive tobacco and fried meat. But for me this comfort was worse than any camp barracks In the barracks you knew that you were the enemy and they hate you. This is where they tried me convince me that I am a guest, although the door is mine the rooms were always locked [music] on two turns of the key.

Friedrich von Kleist created a world around me where there was no war, but I was not in this world either. My name Elena was almost never pronounced. He called me his acquisition or little nightingale. The daily routine was tough. Every morning at 8 o’clock he came Sergeant Becker. He brought hot water and made sure I brought myself to order.

Becker was a man limited and evil. He didn’t understand aesthetics of his general and saw in me just a Russian girl who undeservedly lucky. One day when the background Kleist was not in the villa; Becker entered my room while I was combing my hair. He came up from behind and roughly grabbed me by the braid and hissed right in my ear, what only the Russians will finally lose, he will personally see to it that I am sent to the general barracks with the soldiers.

I saw him yellow teeth and felt it heavy, bad breath. At that moment I realized that my safety hangs thin a hair’s breadth of the general’s whim. Svetlana, which I mentioned before, [music] became my only connection with reality. She was about 45 years old. Before During the war, she worked as a teacher in Kyiv. Her husband and son died in the first days invasions. In the Villa she was a shadow.

She cleaned rooms, washed clothes and sometimeshelped in the kitchen. [music] We talked in short phrases while she changed sheets or brought food. From her I I learned grains of truth. She told me that in the basement of the villa five more girls are being held, but they are not shown to the officers.

[music] Them used for the heaviest and dirtiest work. Svetlana whispered names to me: Olga, Katya, Anna, Vera [music] and more one girl is very small, whose name is she didn’t know. One day in February at the villa Dr. Schultz arrived again. The same one the person who chose me in Minsk. His arrival always meant an inspection.

[music] It was one of the most humiliating tests. Shul forced me strip to white in front of fonkleista. [music] He measured mine height, weight, chest and waist circumference, how as if I were a thoroughbred mare on exhibition. He recorded data in his notebook and discussed with his general my racial characteristics.

[music] They talked about me as if I didn’t exist was in the room. Schultz argued that my facial features have an Aryan influence, and this justified their interest in me. I stood naked on the cold floor, trembling from shame and hatred, and looked into one point on the wall. In those moments I hated your body because it was healthy, because it was not covered with sores and was depleted as quickly as others.

Fonkleist loved order. It’s all about Willie should have shone, but behind this shine the monstrous bureaucracy of death was hidden. I saw how through his office Stacks of papers passed by. [music] Sometimes when I was cleaning his table under under Bakker’s supervision, I saw the lists. This there were lists of trains, numbers indicating the number of people sent to the east.

Underneath this euphemisms concealed gas chambers and execution ditches. Von Kleist signed these papers between sips of cognac and listening to music records Wagner. It was routine. Kill 10,000 a person for him was as simple as order a new batch of wine. In March the first of a series of real events happened traumatic cases.

Brought to the villa a group of new prisoners to work in the garden. Among them was the same Katya, [music] oh to whom Svetlana spoke. She wasn’t more than 16 years. She was very weak I could barely stand on my feet. I saw her from windows of your room. She tried to stab ice on the path, but the ax fell out of it hands Sergeant Becker walked up to her and began scream.

He hit her on the head and she fell. I couldn’t stand it, I screamed and She started hitting the glass with her hands. Becker looked at my window, [music] grinned and hit the girl again, already a boot. Same evening background Kleist called me to his place. He was in good mood. There was dinner on the table for two.

He noticed my swollen from tears eyes and asked what happened. I started beg him to spare Katya, [music] move her to the kitchen, give her at leastsome food. He finished his wine and wiped his lips napkin and said: “Elena, you don’t you understand. The world is designed in such a way that they survive only the best. [music] She is ballast, you are art.

Don’t mix these things.” The next morning Katya was taken outside the fence. I heard one single shot. I never saw her again. That night I realized that my Privilege is not salvation [music] is complicity. I lived in warmth while children were killed for fence, just because they don’t fit someone’s standards of beauty. After Katya’s death there was something in me finally broke.

I stopped cry. My face turned into a mask. Von Kleist did not like this. He wanted see life, passion, gratitude. He started taking me hunting. It was strange, creepy hunt. [music] They don’t hunted wild boars or deer. They prisoners were released into the forest behind the villa and gave them a 10 minute head start.

And then officers rode out on horseback carbines. I was forced to sit in in the saddle next to the general. I saw how grown men, exhausted by hunger, tried to escape through the thorny bushes. I saw their faces full of horror. Background Kleist laughed. [music] He said that it gives him back his zest for life. I closed my eyes, but there were no screams in the forest let me forget.

When we came back, he forced me pour wine to his friends, [music] whose their hands were covered in the blood of those on whom they just hunted. Second a traumatic moment occurred in May 1942 year. Kfonkleistu received guests from Berlin, high-ranking officials of the SS. Was a big reception was arranged.

I was dressed in emerald colored silk dress. Svetlana, when she put it on me, I cried my eyes out. She knew what it was the dress belonged to the Polish wife jeweler who was shot in Warsaw ghetto a month ago. There was still a subtle trace of the smell of someone else’s perfume. I felt as if they put skin on me dead man.

There were about twenty people at the reception officers. The air was blue from tobacco smoke. Von Kleist introduced me to his guests. [music] One of them, heavy a man with small eyes came up to me and began to touch the fabric of my dresses, and then my skin. [music] He spoke about the quality of Slavic material. They started arguing how much I can cost on the black market.

[music] I stood in the middle of the hall, surrounded by these people, in black and gray uniforms, and I felt it running down my back cold sweat They started to force me drink champagne. I refused. But the background Kleist nodded to Becker, who forcibly poured in alcohol in my mouth. I coughed champagne got into the windpipe.

I began to choke. They laughed. This one laughter, it was louder than the music, louder explosions that I heard at the beginning war. [music] It was people laughing who have completely lost their humanity appearance That night after the guestsleft, von Kleist was especially cruel. He didn’t hit me.

No, [music] he did something worse. He made me sit down in front of the mirror and started cutting off my hair. Strand by strand my long hair fell to the floor. [music] He said that I had become too proud and that he should remind me who I am I belong. I looked in the mirror and saw how the last detail of my former self disappears appearance, the one that Alexey loved.

When he finished, I was almost bald. He looked at me and said, “Now you look like one of them. But even you’re so beautiful.” It’s a curse, Elena. The next morning I went out into the garden. Svetlana saw me and screamed, covering his mouth with his hands. We stood by the barn and she hugged me.

This was the first time in for a long time when I felt human warmth. “Nothing, baby,” she whispered. Hair will grow. The main thing what’s inside. They can’t cut it your soul. But I wasn’t into it like that anymore I’m sure. [music] It seemed to me that my the soul flowed out along with those tears, which I could no longer spill. The summer of 1942 brought unbearable heat.

The villa is surrounded by pine forest and the smell of resin mixed with the smell of rot. It turns out that those who were killed during the hunt were not always buried deeply. The earth gave up its secrets. At this time I started noticing changes in behavior security Becker became even more nervous. He started drink right on duty. Svetlana said I think our troops are standing somewhere in the south to death and that the Germans are carrying huge losses.

It was the first hope, but it was bitter. We knew that if our they’ll come close and they’ll just destroy us witnesses. The third occurred in July an incident that I cannot forget to this day por. Svetlana was accused of stealing a piece bread from the kitchen. [music] Actually she took it for Anna, the same the little girl from the basement who was dying of typhus.

Becker staged a public spanking in the courtyard of the villa. All of us, and me, and those who worked in the house were forced watch. Svetlana was tied to a bench. I I saw her thin, emaciated back. The first blow of the whip cut the skin. She doesn’t she screamed, only to find herself groaning dully. After the tenth blow she lost consciousness.

I rushed to her, but the background Kleist held my hand. His fingers bit into my shoulder so hard that There were bruises left. [music] “Look” – he said, “this is the price of disobedience.” Svetlana was dragged into the barn. In 2 days she died of blood poisoning. Before by death she managed to convey to me a small icon that was hidden in patch of your skirt.

“Live, Elena” – she said in her final delirium. “You I have to tell you everything. I was left alone.” Without Svetlana, Willie became quiet absolute. Those five girls in the basement, I I hardly saw them, but I knew that they were life is an endless hell. Sometimes at night I heard them crying through the ventilation pipes. It was a hair-raising soundstood on end.

[music] I started saving sleeping pills, which von Klest took it himself and sometimes gave it to me when I I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to end it this. I didn’t see the point in such a life. [music] I felt a traitor to the memory of Katya, Svetlana and all those whom I could not save. But one night he came to me dream. [music] I dreamed about Alexey.

He stood on our a field near Smolensk, all covered in debris, and smiled. He didn’t say a word, but he the look was full of such love and faith that I woke up in a cold sweat. [music] I realized that if I die now, I I’ll give fonleyst a gift. I’ll disappear [music] and no one will know about Katya, about Svetlana, about camp in Minsk.

My death would be an act of selfishness. I had to endure everything, even if all that remains of me is shell, this shell was supposed to bring the truth to the end of the war. By autumn 1942 years the situation at the front began to change even more noticeable. Von Kleist left more and more often and for longer. The villa began to empty.

The officers no longer arranged magnificent techniques. [music] They sat in offices lined with telephones, and their their faces were gray with fatigue. Bakker became completely insane. He started beat prisoners just like that, without any reason reason. I tried not to go out of my way rooms, but that didn’t help.

Becker often came to me, sat down on a chair and just looked at me for hours, playing with a knife. He was waiting for an order. He knew that it would be early or It’s too late for him to be allowed to deal with me. At the end of November von Kleist returned after long absence. He looked aged 10 years. His form was wrinkled and sunken eyes.

He came to me at night, sat down on the bed and was silent for a long time. [music] Then he said, “We We’re losing. It’s happening there on the Volga something unthinkable. [music] My friends are dying by the thousands.” He looked at me with some strange hope. You will feel sorry for me, Elena? You saw how I treated you not like others.

At that moment I I felt only cold rage. I I remembered Katya, I remembered Svetlana, I remembered hunting people in the forest. I looked him straight in the eyes and said in Russian slowly and clearly: “I’m waiting for that the day when you will all be hanged on these trees in the garden.” He didn’t hit me, he I just got up and left.

I realized that masks are off. >> [music] >> The game of aesthetics is over. Started agony. And this agony was the most dangerous part of my journey. [music] I knew that the most awaited me ahead terrible trials because wounded an animal is 100 times more dangerous than a healthy one. But There was no more fear inside me.

There there was only cold, icy determination survive and witness their end. This is how my first year ended stay on the outskirts of Warsaw. I I lost my hair, I lost my friends, I I almost lost faith in humanity, but I saved Svetlana’s icon and the memory ofevery cry that I heard in these walls.

In the next part I will tell you about how real darkness came, when the Germans realized that the end was near, and how I found myself on the verge between life and death in those very days when the world around I started to completely collapse. My story is not only about suffering. It’s about how hate can become fuel for life when there is no more place for love [music].

The year 1943 arrived. This was the year when time on a wheelie near Warsaw is like thickened, turning into sticky black nightmare. If earlier Friedrich von Kleist tried to play nobility and connoisseur art, [music] then now the masks were completely disrupted. News from the front reached us even through thick walls.

Defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943 year hit the inhabitants of the villa stronger than any artillery projectile I saw it on their faces. They There was no more laughing at dinner. They were drinking much to the point of unconsciousness. And in this drunken in the frenzy their true nature burst forth out.

In March the fourth of the those episodes that are forever burned into my memory. A group of women were brought to the forks, who selected to work in a hospital nearby. [music] There were 12 of them. Among them I saw a woman named Raisa. [music] She was about 30 years old. Before the war she was surgeon. Her arms were covered with deep scars from working in quarries.

Von Kleist decided to organize a medical inspection in your office, inviting Dr. Schultz. I was forced attend as an assistant, [music] although in fact it was just another mockery. They started asking Raisa questions about the structure of the human body, mocking her education. When she answered them with dignity [music] and without fear, Schultz took the medical scalpel What happened next I I can’t describe without leaps and bounds even later 54 years old.

He decided to check sensitivity of nerve endings to its hands without any pain relief. Raisa didn’t scream. She only draws blood bit my lip and looked straight into my eyes Schultz. I stood nearby, clutching in my pocket icon of Svetlana, and felt as if I’m dying of the last drop of pity for to these people. They weren’t human.

They were mechanisms designed to cause pain. After this, Raisa no longer were taken to work. She was simply left in cold barn where she died 2 day. Before I died, I managed to give her some water. [music] She looked at me and whispered: “Don’t let them see your tears, Lena. This is their only [music] joy.

” By the summer of 1943 background Kleist became a completely different person. >> [music] >> His hair sat down, his eyes constantly ran. He began to suffer from seizures uncontrollable anger. One day he came into my room in the middle of the night, pulled me out of bed by my hair anddragged me into the garden.

There, under the old oak tree, Becker has already dug a small hole. Background Kleist put a gun to my head [music] and made me stand on knees. Tell me that you love me – he croaked. Say I’m yours savior I felt the coldness of the metal against my skin. The smell of gunpowder and cheap schnapps from his breathing was unbearable.

I knew that if I say this, I will completely destroy yourself. I closed my eyes and started mentally say goodbye to mom and Alexey. I said: “Shoot, my death will be yours big defeat.” He pulled the trigger, there was a dry sound click. [music] Misfire? No, he’s just didn’t load the gun. He started laughing wild hysterical laughter, and then fell to the ground and started crying.

I stood by him looking at this pathetic man, and for the first time I felt not fear, but deepest contempt. I was stronger him because I had the truth, [music] and he only has weapons and fear before the future. Fifth traumatic moment happened in November 1943. Winter has come early and she was fierce. The villa is almost heated.

Food has become very rare. We ate empty rotten potato stew. One day Becker discovered that one of the girls in basement, Anna, who was only 14 years old, tried to steal a bar of soap from General’s bathroom He didn’t spank her. He came up with something more sophisticated. He took her out into the cold, stripped her naked and began pour ice water from the well.

Everyone we, the remaining prisoners, were forced watch. Von Kleist stood on the balcony in in his warm Chanel and smoked a cigar. I tried to rush to Anna, but two the soldiers were holding me back. She turned into an ice statue right before our eyes. Her little body turned blue, her breath became less and less frequent until stopped completely.

Her eyes remained open, looking at the sky, as if asking God why she did this. In that night I realized that hell is not under earth. Hell was here in this place Warsaw. The year 1944 began. Front was approaching. [music] We heard the distant rumble of Soviet artillery. For it was the most beautiful music for us light.

Every day the cascade It was getting louder. [music] Germans began to prepare for evacuation. They They burned documents in the yard. Black flakes of ash flew in the air like mourning butterflies. Von Klest almost not left his office. He was burning your correspondence, your photographs, your past life. One evening it was mid-July 1944, von Kleist called me over.

He was calm and surprisingly calm. [music] On his table lay a box with jewelry, rings, earrings, brooches. All this was stolen from those whom they killed. “Elena, [music] he said, – soon the Russians will be here. I’m leaving for Berlin. You will come with me.” I did document, and you will be my wife. [music] No one will know who you are actually. We will start a new life.

Hetried to take my hand, but I recoiled as if from a viper. [music] I told him that I’d rather go to the gas station camera, than I’ll spend at least more time with him one day in peacetime. His face distorted with rage. He realized that he the plan to save art failed. The climax came on July 24, 1944. Gultilleria was already very close.

The glass in the windows rattled. The Germans loaded the last things into trucks. Becker was running around the yard with cans of gasoline. They got the order burn the villa along with all witnesses. I was locked in my room on the second floor. I saw from the window how they took the remaining three girls from the basement to wall [music] of the barn.

Among them was Vera, a kind woman who once shared the last piece with me sugar. The soldier raised his machine gun. I screamed, losing her voice, but the sounds shots muffled my scream. They fell into the dust. I realized that I was next. door my room swung open. Becker entered. There was a pistol in his hand and in the other canister His eyes were crazy.

The general left 5 minutes ago, wheezed he. [music] He told me to take care of to you. He said you’re too beautiful to get the Russian Ivan. He started pour gasoline on the floor in my room, bed, curtains. [music] The smell of fuel hit me in the nose. It made his head spin. I realized that this was the end.

54 years later I can still smell that gasoline smell when I go to the gas station. This is the smell of me death. Becker took out a lighter. He smiled with his crooked yellow teeth smile. “Goodbye, beauty,” he said. At that moment the shell hit the tree right in front of the window. The blast wave knocked out frame, glass shards flew inside.

Becker lost his balance for a moment. This was my only chance. I don’t I thought. I acted on instincts which lay dormant in me for 3 years. On mine There was a heavy bronze lamp on the table. Fonleyst’s gift. [music] I grabbed it she hit her with both hands and with all her strength Becker on the head. He fell.

Lighter slipped out of his hands and caught fire on semi. The fire instantly flared up, consuming fabrics doused with gasoline. The room began fill with acrid black smoke. I I was coughing, my lungs were burning. I saw as Becker tries to get up. His face was covered in blood. I didn’t wait. I rushed to the window.

[music] It was on second floor. Below there was a garden and soft earth torn apart by an explosion. I climbed over the window sill, grabbed hands on the ledge and jumped. [music] I don’t remember the pain from the fall either. I remember only the feeling of flight and burning heat behind your back.

The villa was burning [music] flames were escaping from the second floor windows, illuminating the twilight with hellish light. I landed in the rose bushes that background [music] Kleist grew it so carefully. The thorns tore my skin, my dress was in in tatters, but I was alive. I saw how soldiers in the yard jump into the lasttruck and drive off at full speed side of Warsaw. They didn’t even look back.

For them I was already dead, burned in the fire their ambitions. I lay in the mud, unable to move. [music] The sky overhead was red, not from sunset, but from fires. The air trembled from the cannonade. I looked at burning villa and saw it collapse roof, burying Friedrich Fonkleist, [music] although he escaped.

Becker, my 3 years of humiliation and all those the ghosts that wandered these corridors. I saw the bodies of Vera and other girls near walls. I crawled towards them, tearing my knees apart blood. I just wanted to lie next to them and close your eyes. I felt that I was mine the mission is over.

I survived to see their end. But when I crawled to faith and touched her cold hand, I heard a sound. It wasn’t an explosion or shot. It was the roar of a tank engine, but another, faster one. And the screams [music] screams in my native language. For the homeland, forward. I raised my head and saw through a gap in the fence a tank with a red star on the tower.

He broke through centuries trees, crushing [music] them like grass. A soldier in a headset leaned out of the hatch, dusty with a black face, but with such with my own eyes. I tried to scream but only a wheeze escaped from my throat. I raised my hand, which still clutched Svetlana’s icon. Tank stopped. [music] The soldier jumped onto the ground and ran towards me.

He picked up me in your arms. I was as light as feather. “Little sister is alive,” he shouted. someone back. Get the doctor here quickly. He pressed me to his rough gymnast, and I smelled sweat, shag and real human hope. I looked at the burning villa for the last time once and whispered: “I’m not dead.” I waited.

At that moment I didn’t yet know what the real battle was for life is just beginning. what to return with war [music] is not just to sit in the train is home, that years lie ahead of me interrogations, suspicion and silence, which will choke me more than smoke fire. But then in the hands of this soldier I breathed air for the first time in 3 years, which had no smell of death.

I was Elena Ivanovna Sokolova, and I was free. But for this freedom there was paid a price that is impossible express in words. only these the memories that I pass on to you now. End [music] of the third part. B the final fourth part I I’ll tell you what happened after. Oh returning to the destroyed house, [music] about the neighbors’ views, about how I tried to become human again and why I was silent for 54 years before I opened up this door to the past.

My story is coming to an end, but legsy, legacy, just starting to live in your hearts. The first days after how that dusty tanker picked up in my arms in the burning garden, I remember as if through thick, cloudy glass. It was the end of July 1944 year. Gulnada was still trembling in the air, and I was alreadylay in the back of the truck, pressed against some kind of rolled up tarpaulin.

me brought to a field hospital, deployed in the forest under the open sky. There was a thick heavy smell of bleach, stale bandages and shag. There were hundreds of wounded soldiers around me, young guys with torn off limbs and gray faces. Against their background, I with my scars from thorns roses and in rags of a silk dress seemed like some kind of crazy vision from another life.

The nurses washed mine the wounds were silent, but I felt them slanting views. What froze in their eyes was not mine question. Where did you come from? B silks among this ashes. I wanted to shout to them that these silks are mine prison, that they smell of Svetlana’s death and Raisa. But the voice disappeared. I just wheezed and squeezed a small the icon that [music] left me the deceased teacher in front of her last breath.

When I got a little stronger and was able to sit, a real nightmare began, which I didn’t expected. Us, liberated from the German rear, [music] started checking. I was called to Smersha’s tent almost every night. There was an officer sitting there with eyes cold as ice. He didn’t hit me, did not shout like Sergeant Becker.

But his questions were sharper than any knife. [music] He forced me 100 times tell the same thing. How did I get there to a villa? Why Friedrich von Kleist did you choose me? What did we talk about? dinner? He wrote down every word and I I saw my beauty in his notebook turns into evidence betrayal.

[music] For him it was it is unthinkable that a German general could keep Russian girl in a clean room and not kill her right away. “What did you pay for Is this Sokolova? – he asked. And in his there was so much contempt in the voice that I I wanted to choke on this air. I talked about Katya, about the frozen a girl in the garden, about how Becker doused me with gasoline, but he only tapped his pencil on the table.

In those That night I realized the terrible truth. [music] The war did not end with the arrival of our tanks. She just changed her form. I came out of German captivity to get captive to the suspicions of his own people. K September 1944 I finally released, given a certificate and a bag of breadcrumbs I went home near Smolensk.

Trains were slow, missing for months echelons [music] with equipment going to west I looked through the crack of the commodity carriage to your country [music] and not recognized her. The entire land of Belarus and Western Russia was one continuous non-healing wound. the skeletons of the burnt tanks, chimneys instead of villages and endless rows of fresh graves with red stars.

I drove past places where I once laughed and walked with Alexey, [music] and saw only ashes. When I finally got there to my station, [music] I had to walk for 5 hours. My legs were giving way, my heart was beating somewhere in my throat. I’ve reachedthe place where our house stood, and stopped.

There was nothing there but a black pit and a burnt apple tree, which my father planted it when I was born. Aunt Daria, the only survivor of all our street, told me everything. Mom and younger brother was taken to Germany back in March forty-two. More from them there was not a single letter. Father died in militia near Vyazma.

I stood on this empty land where it once smelled fresh bread and milk [music] and understood that I was an orphan in the ashes of your world. Everything I suffered for humiliation on Willy, for which I forced herself to breathe under her gaze fonkleista, all this has disappeared. I have nothing left but memories that burned me from the inside.

I waited for Alexey for a long time. >> [music] >> I believed that if I survived that hell, then he too should have survived. I went to station to each level with front-line soldiers, peered into the faces, I caught every sound. But in May 1945, when the whole country was crying with happiness and shouted victory, [music] I got it official paper.

went missing in August 1941. This meant that everything those 3 years while I was waiting for him [music] while I whispered his name into the pillow on Veli near Warsaw, he was no longer in the world. He died at the very beginning, never knowing what happened to me. This emptiness became absolute inside me. On the day when fireworks thundered on Red Square, I sat on the ruins of her mill and was silent.

I had neither joy nor sorrow, only the icy calm of a person, who died with his love, but forgot to fall. In 1946 year I moved to Leningrad. City was wounded by the blockade. People were transparent from hunger, and it seemed to me that I could get lost among them. I got a job at a factory, worked at three shifts.

[music] My hands that once von Kleist forced to apply expensive creams, now hardened by metal and oil, and it brought me strange relief. B In forty-eight I met Ivan. He was 10 years older than me, [music] returned from the front without one leg, but with such a kind and quiet soul as I am rarely seen.

We got married in 3 month. I never told him the truth. I said I was on forced labor on a farm in East Prussia. I saw how he looks at me with tenderness and protection, [music] and understood that if I opened tell him the truth about the little nightingale General, this shadow will forever lie between us. I was silent for 50 years.

I’m 50 years old I went to bed with him. But every night, when I closed my eyes, I saw nothing our room, and that villa. I heard the click of Becker’s lighter and the smell gasoline. This secret has become mine life sentence. I raised two children, waited for grandchildren, but never said a single word about why I feel so bad sometimes my hands shake when I see the German uniform at the cinema [music] or smellcertain spirits.

Now that yard 1999 a year, I’ve been sitting in this apartment in St. Petersburg and looking at old photographs. My husband Ivan passed away 3 years ago, [music] never knowing who he was with really loved it all these years. Children They consider me just a quiet grandmother, who spends too much time at windows.

But I feel like my time is up outcome. The dreams have become so vivid that I confuse them with reality. I see Svetlana again, I see Raisa, I see that little Anna who froze on in my eyes. They come to me and They ask: “Why are you silent, Lena? If you don’t tell us, we’ll be erased from memory”. And I realized that my beauty who once bought me life, on was actually given to me as obligation.

I had to survive just to so that at the end of your journey like this in front of use a microphone to throw out this pain. So that you knew that war is not only heroism and banners. War is when your body and the person becomes the subject of bargaining. War – this is when you have to smile at the killer, to have a chance to tell the truth about him victims. I often think about von Kleist.

Not I know whether he survived or died in the ruins Berlin. It doesn’t matter to me anymore. His punishment is not a bullet and not a gallows. His punishment is that he couldn’t take my soul. He could cut my hair, could force me to sing to his guests, could burn down my house, but he couldn’t make me love you this darkness.

I remained Elena Ivanovna Sokolova, daughter of Melnik from under Smolensk, despite all the silk and the gold with which he tried me get dirty. And this is my most important thing victory. Now young people live in a different world. They walk the streets, laugh, they choose outfits, and I look at them with such aching tenderness.

I want to scream to them: “Take care of this world! Take care of yours the right to just be yourself.” Never believe those who say that only people more important than others, that someone is more beautiful or purer [music] by right of blood. This is the beginning roads to hell. I was on that road, I saw its end. My hands are still clutching that icon.

She completely worn out by time. Already on it no faces are visible, but I feel in her the warmth of all those women who are not are back. Svetlana, Raisa, Katya, Vera. I call their names every night like prayer. [music] They are me. I am them. We are the ones history wanted to leave in the shadows, but whose voices now sound through [music] me.

When you turn off this recording, I I want you to close for a moment eyes and imagined that little girl in the winter garden near Warsaw. Not me, but the one that wasn’t saved. Remember her. That’s all I ask. Memory is the only thing that cannot be taken away from us is unless we give it away ourselves. My candle almost burnt out.

I feel cold the wind from the open window, and it no longer scares me. I’m ready to leave. I told that’s it. I pulled this piece out of my heart,and now it can stop at rest. My Alexey is waiting for me on that field with cornflowers, and there I’ll be again just nineteen-year-old Lena, who I have my whole life ahead of me.

Without generals, without camps, [music] no gasoline smell. Only the sky, eternal blue sky over my homeland. Goodbye remember us and be human [music] no matter what it costs you. Live like this so you never have to choose between life and conscience. This is the most It’s a heavy burden, and I don’t wish it on anyone. My name is Elena Ivanovna Sokolova.

And this were my last words. It is estimated that [music] more than 2 million Soviet women were sent to forced labor or to concentration camps during World War II. Thousands of them were selected for home service and abuses at German headquarters officers. Break the silence later decades is not just an act courage, but also a form of resistance oblivion.

Remembering means keeping alive the dignity of those who could not tell your story. If you watched until end, write in the comments, from what city or country are you from? watch and subscribe so as not to skip the following evidence. This the story is fiction fiction inspired by reality suffering of Soviet women during World War II.

This story is tribute to their memory and resilience.