Die Ostarbeiterin

Imagine living during a time when your entire world is turned upside down. Imagine everything being taken away from you within a matter of months: your livelihood, your freedom, and even your friends and family, simply because of your ethnic heritage. This is the story of Nelli.

Nelli, though being Ukrainian and born in Poltava, grew up in Kraków, Poland, with her parents and her brother, Maksym. They were simple, working people with strong Orthodox Christian faith. They always tried to make the most out of every hardship, even when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland in 1939. In addition to losing her job and being allowed very little food by the Nazi's ration system, she witnessed the humiliation and persecution of those she loved.

Just when one would think that things could not get worse for Nelli or her family, she received a summons to report for transit to a labor camp. Though frightened to leave her family and go somewhere she had never been, she followed her parents' advice and held firmly onto her faith and her Ukrainian identity.

Life in the labor camp, where she is labeled an Ostarbeiter (eastern worker) was very difficult. She was forced to work several hours a day and six days a week in return for food that provided almost no sustenance and a straw bed that was never free from fleas and other bugs. Even the hardest workers were not protected from the brutality of their angry and sadistic German masters or from the lust of German soldiers. Each day for her was a struggle for survival and to uphold her dignity, virtue, and faith. Will she be able to persevere until war's end, or will she give in?