Dina Mikhailovna Szulkiewicz was sent to a labor camp in her childhood, and from there, after World War II, to a Soviet orphanage. Her identity was stripped away, she survived brutal treatment, gang rape and hard work in terrible conditions. There were more children like her.
They took us from the train to the camp in Bidaik, and from there to Dolinka. There, my mother was something of a warden. She was a great scientist, a geneticist, very fond of growing plants. Huge watermelons, cabbage, and tomatoes grew out of her hands. She went to Karaganda to teach. In the museum in Dolinka, even a picture of her is hanging, you can see it.
In her life, Dina worked as a seamstress, controller in buses, served bunk, sewed shoes, ran out of goods on the shelves, kicked people's potatoes.
She somehow didn't admit to me. Sometimes in the evening I was led to her barrack and she accompanied me in the morning. To a mild orphanage? I do not know. It seems to me that I was buried somewhere in a labor camp. I remember a hospital barrack or a security building. Then I went to the orphanage in Kompaniejsko. It was already 1947.
Girl
This is where you were given the name Dina?
Not. There we were called by numbers or diewoczka (girl). I was called Dina at the hospital where I ended up with typhoid fever. "Okay, I thought, let that name be already."
And all the girls in the orphanage were called "baby girl"?
Yes. We slept there in bed with the boys. But not sexually, it was just a habit. It was shocking to me, I thought, "God, if a girl has critical days, what is she doing?" Only then were the groups broken down by gender.
Educators came to girls for sexual purposes?
I heard that it happened in other bedrooms, not in ours. There was also a little girl at our house, a helper and a carpenter. You used to go to his shed for firewood. He was doing something with the girls, but I didn't go there.
"Don't look, what do you need this for?"
In Kompaniejsko, I still had a mistake in languages and spoke bad Russian. The children were laughing. A former military man taught us to write and read. He cut the animals out of paper, folded them in half, ordered to name them.
Once I heard that my sister Ania also went to Kompaniejska. The director of the orphanage brought a little girl to me, but she was not a little sister! Mine had neat, pretty legs, and this one was a little shrunken. My soul did not fit. I fell into despair that I wanted to see my real sister. Then I found out that my Ania was in my orphanage for six months, in a different group, but my mother took her home.
And you didn't take it?
I don't think she knew I was there. Otherwise my mother would not have left me. Truth? The first time I ran away from an orphanage in the seventh grade. I went to Karaganda, I asked people on the street where the KGB was, they showed me, so I went there . I say, "I came here because I want to know where my mother is." They offered me food, gave me tea and told me to come back. “Girl, don't look. What do you need this for? " they said. Then I went to them a few more times, even after I left the orphanage. They always got out of the way.
Violent rape
Life in Kompaniejsko was terrible. Drunken or distracted teachers, beat us, called us "enemies of the nation" . There was little to eat, one valance for four people, there were no hats at all, a lot of frostbite. I kept passing out, no one knew why. This is my whole life.
We had to clean ourselves, scrub floors, wash for everyone, I peeled potatoes very nicely in the kitchen. They taught me to sew. When I turned fourteen, they forbidden to continue studying and ordered me to go to the Pimokatu, to the walonek factory. It was very hard work there. First, I stood cleaning the fur, then rolling and the big machine. She pulled in more than one hand, I managed to save me.
Drawing Archive of New Files
Did you still live in the orphanage?
Workers were moved to barracks nearby. Several girls lived in one room. I continued my studies in the evenings, I worked during the day. And I was doing so well that my picture was hung on the blackboard in the cafeteria. Leader Szulkiewicz! My factory colleagues raped me because of this photo . They liked the photo, they said to Emmoczka, their friend:"Find this grandmother for us".
There was a time when men did what they wanted. Orphanage workers - most of them raped. Emma had two children from there. There was a hole in the fence surrounding the female barracks, they were walking through it. It was 1959. They entered the room, I was alone . Three raped, one watched. They beat me up and dragged me into the woods to die there . Some man found me in a ditch by the road. I reported the matter to the militia. They were caught, sentenced to prison. The worst one had a wife and children, what was he for?
Terrible life
They say that when a girl and a boy have the same recognition they will be happy together. I do not know. In the early 1960s, I married Anatoly Mikhailovich Maslov, a miner and a drunkard. He was pretty, tall. He tried to hit me, but once I gave him back, I barely killed him. I gave birth to two children - a daughter, Natashenka Anatolyevna, and a son, Vitaly Anatolyevich.
Didn't you change your name after your wedding?
I said that until I find out who I am, I will become Szulkiewicz. I had a terrible, hard life. But all the time, even in the worst moments, there was a thought with me:“Who was daddy, who was mom? Where's your sister? Where am I from? ” . In 1964 we got an apartment from a mine in the same block where I live now. I worked all days. I left Pimokat, I was a bus controller, I served banya, I sewed shoes, I ran out of goods on the shelves, I made potatoes in the water supply, I dug potatoes for people.
Dina Michajłowna Szulkiewicz:I said that until I find out who I am, I will become Szulkiewicz
I was not afraid of work. The children went to school, they had to take care of themselves. A friend of the cook was cooking them dinners. Natasza studied well, she was a polite child (she left for Germany with her family thirty years ago). But the son fell into alcoholism. He was twelve when they first drove him for resuscitation. He was all blue, he was so drunk. He barely survived. And he got hooked.
He married a drunk, they have a daughter, my beloved granddaughter - she also married a drunk, but she doesn't drink alcohol herself. Vitaly, my son, has been in rehab six times. They don't want him there anymore because he always got drunk during treatment. Now he lives with me in the stairwell. I threw him the mattress there, and I'm taking the food. I do not let the house, because he is aggressive after vodka. The neighbor on the floor above was killed by a drunk son, so I don't want to risk it.
Are you divorced from your husband?
Where there! They killed him in 1978. He went to rest at the Borovoye resort, he deserved it as a miner, and he wandered there, drunk, got involved in criminal matters, so he died. The militia only informed me that the murderers had burned his body in a furnace.
Source:
The text is an excerpt from Magdalena Grzebałkowska's book "Wojenka. About children who grew up without warning ”, which has just been released by Agora publishing house.