This testimony was written by Ekaterina Volkova between 1985 and 1987 , 2 years before her death. For 42 years, she remained silent about her experiences in the Ravensbrück concentration camp . These are her words. This is her last call not to forget. My name is Ekaterina Volkova. Today I am seventy-one years old, and I live in a small apartment in Leningrad.
For 42 years I remained silent about what I experienced between April 1943 and April 1945 in Ravensbrück, a women’s camp in Germany. I raised my children, worked as a school teacher, and pretended those 2 years never existed. But now my grandchildren ask why I never talk about the war. And I feel that if I do n’t tell, all this will disappear along with me.
It’s like an invisible mark that I wear. Heavy, but hidden. I must speak for those who couldn’t. Before the war I was a young teacher of 23 years in Leningrad. I taught Russian language and arithmetic to children in elementary school. Life was simple. She lived with her mother in a modest communal apartment, dreaming of getting married, maybe having a family.
It was 1941 when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union. At first we were afraid, but we continued to live. Then in 1942 I started helping the partisans. Nothing special. She hid notes in school notebooks and shared bread with soldiers going into the forests. The children told me what they heard from their fathers at home, and I passed on the information.
On April 15, 1943, everything turned upside down. It was Tuesday morning. At 6:00 a.m. the Gestapo knocked on the door. Three civilians with strong accents searched the apartment. Found a list of names in a school notebook. Mom was crying, they left her and took me away. I was put in a truck with other women from Leningrad, Nina, a 28-year-old nurse, and Galina, a 35-year-old seamstress.
We were taken to prison in Leningrad, then to Riga, and from there to Germany. On April 27, a convoy of 2,002 Soviet women was loaded into freight cars bound for Ravensbrück. No windows, only boards. We sat like cattle. 3 days without water, without food. Women prayed, others cried quietly. I clutched the cross my mother gave me.
When the doors opened on April 30, 1943, the air smelled of swamp and disinfectant. Ravensbrück was located near Fürstenberg, north of Berlin, surrounded by stinking swamps. A large plain surrounded by barbed wire. Wooden barracks are lined up in rows like boxes. The SS guards, women in gray uniforms, yelled in German: “Schnell, los! They cut our hair and gave us striped dresses, blue-gray, too big, with numbers. Mine was 1700472ru.
No longer Katya, just a number. They gave us a red triangle with the letter su for Soviet political prisoners. The smell, a mixture of damp dirt, sweat, and something chemical that burned our nostrils. The ground was cold under our bare feet. The first days we learned the rules under sticks. Wake up at 4:00 in the morning to shouts and whistles.
Opel on the street in the rain or snow for 2 hours. We counted and recounted motionless, even if we were shaking from the cold. Then thin soup, like water, a piece of black bread. At 5:30 a.m. march to the Siemens factory 2 km. We sewed parts for airplanes for 12 hours a day. Fingers We were freezing in the cars.
If we slowed down, the warden would lash us with a whip. Nina would whisper nearby: “Hold on, Katya, think about your evening soup.” In the evening, another Opel for two hours, then barrack number 12 for us Soviets. We slept in 80 bunks, a blanket for three, lice everywhere, hunger gnawing at our stomachs. There, for the first time, I heard the rules among us, Soviet women.
Without screaming, you will be marked. This was said by Galina, who spent a month in the Riga prison before us. German soldiers watched everything. During punishments, an overturned bucket, an evasive look, they didn’t hit at random. They watched how we reacted. If you screamed in pain, they wrote in a notebook: “Weak, sensitive.” If you were silent, biting your lips until they bled, they wrote “persistent, dangerous.
” These notes decided: one to hard labor in the swamp, another to the medical block for experiments, a third to the execution wall. Without screaming, you were marked as a threat. It was better to show that it broke quickly. My first test came a week later, on May 7, 1943. I tripped, rushing a bucket of dirty water.
Water splashed on the boots of the punisher Maria Mandel, a tall blonde with cold eyes. She dragged me to the middle of the apel. 20 blows with a stick on my back in front of everyone. The pain rose like liquid fire. My whole body wanted to scream, to beg. But I remembered Galina’s words the day before. Bite your hand, Katya, without screaming.
I sank my teeth into my flesh, tasted the salty blood. The other Soviets lowered their eyes. The Germans wrote: “Silent, noted.” That evening in the barracks, Nina put a newspaper on the wounds. “You survived,” she whispered. “But now they will be watching.” In the following days, I saw how the system worked. Every morning, an SS officer walked I walked down the rows with a notebook, choosing the new ones, noting whether they blinked from the cold, or staggered from hunger.
The quiet ones like me were sent to Yugid Camp, a youth camp, for harder work, digging ditches in the mud. The screamers remained at the factory, considered less dangerous. This was their way of sorting, not by name or crime, but because the body gave spirit. One Polish woman, Anna, once told me: “It’s worse than hunger.
They steal your soul, measuring you.” At night, we shared these stories to keep from going crazy. The summer of 1943 brought heat and flies. Sometimes we worked naked for disinfection, lined up under the gaze of the guards. The sun burned our skin, the shame even stronger. I saw the first selection. 50 women for transfer. The silent ones in front.
They didn’t shout when they boarded the trucks. Rumors spoke of Berenburg, Gaza. Galina arrived in September. Before leaving, she gave us a bar of soap. “Be quiet, but not too quiet. Survive for us.” I saw her only in dreams, but there were moments of light. In October, the new Soviet Tatyana arrived from the convoy from Riga. She shared bread.
At night, she quietly sang Soviet songs, so that we would smile without noise. Imagine Leningrad after the war,” she said. Nina and I formed a trio. They promised to remember the names and not let the Germans wipe us out. These moments kept us on our feet as the opels dragged on until dawn. The winter of 1943-1944 was the most terrible.
Snow fell endlessly on the ravensbrück, turning the swamp into sharp ice. The wooden blocks, which were a bit too big, slipped with every step, and we walked barefoot inside so as not to get lost. My toes were black from the frost. I felt the meat coming off piece by piece. Every morning at Opel we saw women falling straight as boards.
The guards left them and considered them dead in the evening . Nina showed how to rub your feet with melted snow at night. This will keep the blood moving. Without her, I would have lost my legs in December. Then the marking system became more accurate and cooler. In each block, a junior SS officer kept his own notebook .
Not only the screams were noted, but also the details. How long can you remain motionless under the blows? Are your eyes watery or dry? Does the voice of Yavol tremble with the command? The marked silent ones like me were driven to the swamp team. Dig canals at 0 degrees. Water up to the hips. with rusty shovels.
The sensitive ones were kept inside sorting papers or sewing. It was their perverted science to sort souls by the pain of the body. My second big test came on January 12, 1944. During the night, a supply truck broke down near our barracks. They woke us up at 2 a.m. to unload sacks of frozen potatoes, heavy as stones. One slipped into the mud.
The supervisor on duty, a short brunette named Elizabeth, saw it and forced it to rise with her teeth like a dog. Then the officer whistled in front of everyone. 10 lashes on the legs, order to stand still for an hour. The skin was torn, blood flowed across the ice, sticking the feet to the ground. I bit the inside of my cheeks and counted the stars so as not to scream.
The officer slowly wrote: “Withstands cold and pain. Type A. Observe marked more strongly. After that, I was transferred to block 10, the worst place. It’s not a factory, but experiments. Not on me directly, but I saw. Twice a week, doctors in white coats came, chose silent women for cold torture, injections of unknown substances into the veins.
Then they put them naked for hours. Hungarian Ilona lasted two nights. On the morning of the third, her lips were blue and she did not speak. They noted that she was weak now and returned to work. But she died three days later in her sleep. They buried her in a common pit without a name. Nina and I tried to protect each other.
She was classified as sensitive because she once cried in an Opel and remained at the Siemens factory. They drove me into the swamp. In the evening, we exchanged rations. She gave bread for my thick soup. “They want to break us one by one,” she whispered. Together We’re holding on. We made up memory games, repeated poems from school, named the streets of Leningrad.
Tatyana, our singer, taught us children’s counting rhymes. These moments breathed life into our exhausted bodies. But the horror grew. In March 1944, collective punishment for the failed escape of two Poles. The entire camp by the frozen lake. Two women, tied to posts, received 100 blows each. First they screamed, then silence.
The officer shouted the recordings out loud for everyone to hear. The first weak 10 screams, the medical block. The second remained silent until the end. Execution tomorrow. We stood motionless until the end in the freezing rain. In the evening, there was silence in the barracks, only muffled sobs.
I squeezed Nina’s hand, cold as death. The summer of 1944 brought flies and tiv. The camp is overcrowded. 30,000 women from everywhere. Soviet, Polish, Hungarian, Jewish, Czech. The blocks were breaking, we slept four to a mattress. The disease killed 10 a day. Doctors with marks picked out the weak in the nearby Hohnelkhien crematorium.
They kept me, the silent one, at work. Now shells in a smoky barracks. Fingers bled on metal. Gunpowder burned my lungs. Once there was a loud thud. Punishment, 20 laps around the block with a bag of stones. Endured without a sound, legs on fire. Again they wrote down endurance. In August, I lost Tatiana. She shared an apple with a 16- year-old Yugoslav girl, Mira. They caught her.
Punishment: tied back to back at a pole, hands up. 3 days without water. Tatiana whispered songs on the first day. The second, she moaned quietly. The third, silence. The officer smiled, writing: “The singer is broken, translation! We left by truck in the evening. Nina and I cried secretly.
Now there are two of us, I said. We’ll survive for three.” Autumn brought the first sounds of the changing war. At night, distant explosions were heard. The guards were nervous, they beat harder. In November 1944, a new one arrived from Moscow. Lyudmila, 29, a hairdresser, understood a little German, translated notes from stolen notebooks.
Soviet Volkova, 18472, a stubborn silencer, a candidate for Uckermündi. This is a subcamp for the young, even worse experiments in sterility. Lyudmila advised: “At the next punishment, let out a quiet cry, show that you are breaking.” But how? The body learned silence. December 5, 1944, success or failure.
During the Opel, a storm blew down the fence. Chaos. I helped the old Russian get up. An SS man saw. They dragged a 2 by 2 meter cell into the bunker without light. 3 days without food. They beat her twice. Day. She survived the first time. The second, the pain was unbearable. A stick to the kidneys, like a hammer. A groan escaped, quiet but audible.
The officer laughed. Finally, she broke. Recorded as partially broken. Marked differently. Nina was waiting at the exit. She did the right thing, less surveillance, but the price was paid elsewhere. In January 1945, Nina was chosen for a special selection. Stubborn, silent ones, like before. Block 10, experiments on legs, operations without anesthesia for transplant tests.
They passed a note through a Polish woman. Don’t cry. Tell us for us. Never saw her again. Her number 174169. Seared into her head. February 1945. The camp was a living hell. The Red Army was approaching. We heard the guns day and night. The SS women went mad with rage. The whips were heavier, and the chanting was endless, until the women fell. Dead in the snow.
Thin as a skeleton, 35 kg. Bones protruded from the skin, teeth were loose, gums were bloody. But the marking system continued, more precisely than before. SS officers shouted: “The silent ones first! The persistent ones to the Yugind camp! Last sorted. The strong were left to slow down the Soviet advance through forced labor, the broken ones were sent to the crematorium.
Lyudmila, a hairdresser from Moscow, became my barracks sister. She is 30. Her hair is cut short, but her smile is quiet. “Katya, we ’ll get out,” she whispered, sharing a crust of bread. Worked together on the ammunition team. Collecting shells in a smoky barracks cut my fingers on the sharp edges. Black powder made them cough up blood, but they remained silent.
One night in March, Lyudmila stole a blunt knife from a car. “For protection, if it gets worse,” she said, but in the morning the Opel was searched. The knife was found in her mattress. Instant punishment, fine, block. I prayed silently , but in vain. She was dragged out naked in front of the camp and tied to a pole in the pouring rain.
The SS officer, tall, skinny Kramer, read the notes aloud. Volkova, the silent one, an observer of Lyudmila. Broken, but complicit, 100 strokes. The whip whistled, the leather tore into pink tatters on the snow. Lyudmila held out for 10 minutes without making a sound, biting her tongue. Then hoarse, animal-like screams, and at the end she lay motionless.
They wrote: “Completely broken.” Translation in Uckermünde. In the evening, while carrying him to the barracks, she whispered: “Tell me about the marks.” She died 2 days later. It’s hot. Scratched her name on the board. Lyudmila Ivanova, 18520. My own torment reached its peak in April 1945. April 10th, complete chaos.
The USSR evacuated the documents and burned stacks of notebooks with marks in the courtyard. But before that, there is the final selection. 500 women for a special promotion. The persistent silent ones are given priority. I was included. They lined up naked, frozen and shivering, at Lake Shvidzeya .
An SS doctor in a dirty robe pointed his finger. You are type A. You are broken. 20 Soviets with me. Direction of trucks to the Malkhov crematorium. I saw Anna Polka, also chosen, the one who spoke about the theft of the soul. Squeezed her hand. Keep silent until the end, but then there will be a miracle. April 12 Soviet bombing.
Fences flew up, explosions shook the ground. The bullies fled in panic, leaving the gates open. We ran, hundreds of skeletons in striped robes, into the forest. I helped a 14-year-old Jewish girl, Ruthie, climb over the fence. “Bite your hand if you scream,” I said. Walk for 3 days through the swamps, eat roots, drink muddy water.
Legs in blood, lungs on fire. On April 15th we met the first Russians, motorcyclists, bearded, crying at the sight of us. Soviets, you are free. The official liberation came on April 30, 1945, when the Red Army captured Ravensbrug. Only 15,000 survived out of 130,000 who passed through.
Blocks, open graves, bodies in stacks. The Russians gave white bread and milk. First solid food in 2 years, but stomach failed. Vomiting and diarrhea. I’m 25, but I walk hunched over like an old woman. Soviet doctors counted the ribs. 11 is visible. My legs were partially gangrenous and were saved by a miracle, but the real pain was inside.
I saw the notebooks with notes. The silent one is marked. The first weeks of freedom are worse than a camp. They cried for no reason and shuddered from the trucks. I found 12 Soviets from our convoy, out of two hundred in Avtsitiya from Leningrad. Miracle. They hugged and listed the dead. Galina, Tatyana, Lyudmila, Nina.
The Russians sent it by special train in May. I arrived in Leningrad on May 20, 1945. My mother was waiting at the station, aging 10 years. My Katya hugged me, but she couldn’t speak . The silence of the camp became my skin. Coming home felt strange. Leningrad is liberated, flags, joy in the streets. But I saw grey uniforms.
Everywhere I tried to return to school in September 1945. But the screams of children returned to the drops. I quit. In 1947 she married Peter, a former partisan. Two children, normal life. But at night dreams, whips of a notebook marked by silence. She burned the striped robe, but the marks remained inside.
The years after the war are a long, invisible struggle. In 1946, she gave testimony at the Nuremberg Trials, but only in writing. It’s too hard to speak out loud. The words stuck in my throat like on Opels. I read about the Ravensbrück trials in 1947 in Hamburg. Maria Mandel was hanged, Kramer was executed. But the notebooks with marks burned.
Nobody talked about a pain classification system. She remained silent for 42 years, teaching children who did not know about the red triangles. Life in Leningrad was calm on the outside. Peter, the husband, never asked, saw his horrors in the partisans. Children born in 1948 and 1951 grew up cheerful, but shuddered at the sound of train whistles and counted women in lines.
At night I relived the recordings: “Silent, Type A.” In 1960, she visited the Raven von Bruck memorial with other Soviet survivors. The barracks are in ruins, the lake is calm. for the first time I cried in public, whispering names: Galina, Tatyana, Lyudmila, Nina, Anna, Ilona, Ruth. Only 15 Soviet out of 220. Why did you wait until 1985 to speak? Because silence was survival.
In the camp, a cry meant a mark for death. After speaking, the wounds began to open. But now, in 1971, I see how my grandchildren are learning a clean history without traces. Schools tell the numbers: 130,000 women in Ravensbruck, 30,000 dead. But not about the system, how people in uniforms wrote down souls in notebooks, decided lives by groans or silence.
This, it must be said, is a cold banality behind the numbers. This system was not random. Every morning SS officers passed by, pen in hand, observing our broken bodies. Tear, weak factory. Fixed gaze under blows. Sustainable experiments. They stole humanity, measuring and sorting it like objects.
Nina said: “They want our spirits as much as our bodies.” The Soviets came up with the rules the other way around. Without shouting, you will be marked to deceive the records, to save the sisters. But how much was paid, how many silent women were sent to their deaths, protecting others? Today in 1987, I speak for them.
So that you young people know, war is not about cards and victories. This is an officer smiling as he writes down the broken after the whip. A friend who bites her hand to keep from screaming and to save the next one. Of the 220 from Leningrad, 15 returned in 1943. I, Ekaterina Volkova, number 18472, red triangle SU. Survived to carry their voices.
What did you learn in Ravensbrück? Human nature is a terrible mystery. You can be an angel sharing bread, a demon shedding tears. Survival is not the strength of the body, but of the spirit that remembers names. Nina, Galina, Tatyana, Lyudmila, Anna. I’m carrying you. And you who hear, do not forget. Too long a silence erases souls.
Speak for us, marked or not, we were human to the end. M.
