Tag: Hunger

It wasn’t until late summer 1945 that the last “Ostarbeiter” left the camp in Neuaubing. Their journey home in many cases became a journey into the unknown. Most of them were initially sent to so-called filtration camps, where they were interrogated by employees of the Soviet security service NKVD. Later on, too, many of them continued to be automatically suspected of having collaborated with the Nazis. They were put under surveillance by the security service and discriminated.

Hanna Hutnyk, Mariya Sadova, Oleksandra Havriš, Hanna Šust‘ and Anna Šapovalova were deported from Yevmynka to Germany when they were between 3 and 17 years old. Once the war was over they were able to return to their village where they intended to resume their former lives, but their time in Germany had a lasting effect. For their entire remaining life-time they were viewed with suspicion. Even though they tried to leave this episode in their past behind them, it was all documented by the security service in their personal files and remained there until well into the 1980s.

Together with Eastern Europe expert Kristina Tolok, Sima Dehgani traveled to Ukraine in 2021 in order to trace the lost time in the lives of these contemporary witnesses. They were supported on site by Liubov Danylenko, expert on the topic of Nazi forced labor, and met members of four generations—the contemporary witnesses themselves, their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren through whom the memories of the former forced laborers have been passed down and kept alive. Objects play a special role in their family histories, since they preserve experiences that were not spoken about in material form. Often it is photos of family members that embody their absence while providing a connection to the deceased. Preserved objects from Germany are not only of symbolic value, however, but also serve as evidence of suffering of forced labor and are used to support demands for compensation. Dehgani’s photo series conveys the idea that memory can be preserved in a variety of forms and shows how objects can reactivate history. Her work illustrates that collective remembrance is triggered by specific things and places and is embedded in social contexts.

With the fall of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in July 1943 the so-called Pact of Steel between fascist Italy and Nazi Germany came to an end. The Kingdom of Italy concluded a ceasefire with the Allies on September 8, 1943, and declared war on Germany. That day the Italian soldiers who had previously been fighting on the side of the Germans suddenly became enemies of the Nazi regime. Those who were in areas controlled by Germany were taken prisoner. If they refused to go on fighting on the side of Nazi Germany they became prisoners of war and were brutally exploited as forced laborers.

After their liberation they returned to an entirely different Italy. Their ambivalent story was difficult to integrate in the Italian postwar narrative. Many of them felt deeply isolated and from then on never spoke about their experiences again. Very few of these contemporary witnesses are still alive; for their families, the time their fathers spent in Germany has left a large hole in their lives. The reportage asks what the role of historic experiences is in family and transnational collective memory.