Photo archive of forced laborer Hanna Kovalenko, Poltava Oblast

In April 2022, we managed to buy at an online auction an archive of 20 photographs dated 1943-1945.

Most of them have inscriptions on the back, addressed to Halia Kovalenko. In this particular case, “Halia” is a nickname for Hanna.

This archive belonged to Hanna Stepanivna Konko (née Kovalenko.) We managed to identify her using the materials of the filtration case in the State Archives of Poltava region and documents from the Arolsen Archives – The International Center on Nazi Persecution.

She was born on April 5, 1927, in the village of Pukhalshchyna in the Hradyzky (now Kremenchuk) district in Poltava region. Her parents, Stepan and Domaha Kovalenko, were poor peasants. Hanna completes 7 grades of school. During the Nazi occupation, she worked in the community yard number 78 – a former kolhosp (collective farm).

On November 22, 1942, Hanna was conscripted for forced labor. According to her, she was appointed by the village council and a local policeman. She was only 15.

In early December 1942, Hanna arrived in the city of Furtwangen-im-Schwarzwald in Baden-Württemberg. Richard Zalten, a local historian, notes the cautious attitude of the German population toward the so-called eastern workers. Girls were barefoot and dressed in rags because they had no time to get ready for travel. Their miserable appearance made them perceived as some kind of tramp. Zalten estimates that they constituted the majority of more than 1,100 forced laborers who worked in Furtwangen-im-Schwarzwald for the entire period of World War II.

Hanna was taken to the so-called camp for eastern workers “Baduf,” organized at the famous Baden watch factory (Ostarbeiterlager Baduf - short for Badische Uhrenfabrik). It consisted of wooden barracks, each designed for 80 women workers.

On December 10, 1942, Hanna received a work card, which allowed her to leave the camp only for work. As Zalten points out, the discipline in the camp was quite strict. Any violation was punished by beatings. Zorbach, a local doctor, even complained that he was tired of sewing up the wounds on the heads of forced laborers again and again. The documents show that Hanna visited Zorbach only once to treat conjunctivitis, which made her unable to work from December 5 to 16, 1944.

From the moment she arrived, Hanna worked at the Fridolin Scherzinger Elektro- und Feinmechanik Apparatebau, a manufacturer of electrical and fine mechanical precision instruments. In the 1990s, she recalled it as "the small factory near the river, with the railway nearby."

On April 13, 1945, Hanna was transferred to the Gilzer farm in the village of Rohrbach (now part of Furtwangen-im-Schwarzwald.) The French army entered the area shortly, on April 25.

For several more months, Hanna and other forced laborers lived in Furtwangen-im-Schwarzwald. At least four images from her photo archive are dated May – early September of 1945.

They were handed over to the Soviet side afterward. For former forced laborers, this meant undergoing the so-called filtration: registration and investigation of political trustworthiness. Therefore, on September 7, 1945, Hanna was taken to the NKVD camp number 253 in the city of Zeithein in Saxony, which held more than 10 thousand people at that time. Three days later she was allowed to return home. On October 2, 1945, Hanna Kovalenko arrived in Pukhalshyna.

Upon Hanna’s return to her native village, she had to pass a second investigation. On 23 November 1946, she was summoned to the Hradyzky district department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Like most former forced laborers, Hanna had to answer questions like "When and by whom were you taken to Germany?" and "Who can confirm your words?". Additionally, investigators interrogated Hanna’s acquaintance, another forced laborer, and accepted a certificate from the Pukhalshchyna village council about possible "anti-Soviet activities" of Hanna or her relatives. Even though she passed the investigation successfully, it illustrated the suspicion with which people like Hanna were treated in the post-war Soviet Union.

In the 1990s she lived in Kremenchuk. She died in 2003.

The captions on the backs of the photos allowed us to identify several other forced laborers. In particular, four girls from the village of Nedoharky, neighboring Pukhalshchyna, in the same Gradyzhsky district. Probably, Kovalenko knew them before. Their fates are similar as well: they all were conscripted for forced labor on November 23, 1942, moved to Furtwangen-im-Schwarzwald two weeks later, lived in the Baduf camp, and passed post-war Soviet inspections.

Marfa Antonivna Berezhna (née – Romanenko) was born on September 17, 1926. She completed 6 grades of school. In Furtwangen-im-Schwarzwald, as she puts it, she got "to work at a machine at the factory where Nazis produced aircraft parts." She meant the Heinrich Eiffert watch factory (Heinrich Eiffert Uhrenfabrik). After the war, she returned to Nedoharky and lived in the neighboring village of Yalyntsi in the 1990s.

Tetiana Mykhailivna Holovko was born on February 22, 1924. She completed 7 grades of school and worked on a collective farm.

Like the others, she was taken to Furtwangen-im-Schwarzwald first, and then – to the city of Lahr, 60 kilometers to the north. She worked at the Gerhard Berger factory of electrical measuring instruments (Gerhard Berger Fabrikation elektrischer Meßgeräte).

On October 1, 1945, she returned to Nedoharky, but she did not reside there for the next year. Her further fate is unknown.

Varvara Pavlivna Nakonechna (née – Shulha) was born on October 3, 1922. Before the war, she graduated from a 9-grade school, then from a medical college in Kremenchuk, and worked there as a nurse in the children's hospital.

On June 24, 1941, she was conscripted to the Red Army, served in the 163rd medical battalion in the Smolensk direction, until in March 1942 she was surrounded by Germans. She managed to escape and get to her native village.

In Furtwangen-im-Schwarzwald, Varvara worked at the Brothers Eschle metal structures factory (Gebrüder Eschle Metallwarenfabrikem>), which manufactures small aircraft parts. On September 30, 1945, she returned to Nedoharky. In the 1990s she lived in the village of Vlasivka, Kirovograd region.

Mariia Dmytrivna Moskalyk (née — Koshulko) was born on February 4, 1925. She completed 4 grades of school.

Liudmyla Krivchenko, a teacher from Nedoharky, helped to learn more about her. Since the early 1990s, she and her students have been gathering information about fellow villagers who were forced to work in Nazi Germany. They recorded Mariia's account of her experiences.

"They got people to Hradyzk and then started to load them into wagons. We went there [to Germany - auth.] on a freight train. It was cold, we were starving. When we arrived in a German city, they paired us at the station. Then the owner came and counted 16 people. He asked if we understood them, and we just shrugged," she said.

In Furtwangen-im-Schwarzwald, Mariia was settled in the Baduf camp, like the others. "We lived in barracks for 20 people, held shifts to keep the fire going," she recalled.

Krivchenko keeps the photo she received from Mariia. It shows her and other forced laborers who lived together in the camp, including Hanna Kovalenko and several other girls identified in the photo archive images.

Mariia worked at a lathe at the Brothers Eschle metal structures factory. She also mentioned the merciful attitude of some Germans toward them. “I would stand near my lathe and sob, and our German supervisor would approach me, stroke my head, and ask me not to cry. “The war will end, and you’ll go home,” he would say. His wife worked with us and sometimes cooked and brought food for us because the camp's food was scarce."

On 1 October 1945, Mariia returned to Nedoharky. She spent the rest of her life in her native village, married there, raised two sons and a daughter, and had grandchildren. She died on November 22, 2011.

Four other forced laborers came from other settlements in Poltava region.

Yevdokiya Gavrylivna Honcharova (née – Hlushko) was born on January 2, 1917, on the Lyshchenky farm (now non-existent) near the village of Horishni Plavni, Kremenchuk district. Her father died when she was 2 years old. She finished 2 grades of school. In 1934, she started working on a collective farm in Horishni Plavni. When during the Nazi occupation it was turned into a community yard, she continued to work there.

In Furtwangen-im-Schwarzwald, she worked at the Siedle & Sons telephone and telegraph equipment factory (Telefon- und Telegrafenwerke Siedle & Söhne).

She returned home on October 1, 1945, and worked on the local collective farm. She lived in Kremenchuk in the 1990s.

Yevdokiia Demianivna Bashlai (née — Teslia) was born in 1913 in the village of Arteliarshchyna, Zinkiv district.

She arrived in Furtwangen-im-Schwarzwald earlier than others because on October 26, 1942, she had already started at the Baden watch factory. On July 17, 1944, she was transferred to the Ernst Reiner Company which manufactured fine mechanical precision instruments (Feinmechanik und Apparatebau Ernst Reiner).

When the war ended, she returned to Arteliarshchyna. Her further fate is unknown.

Mariia Petrivna Odynytsia was born on April 2, 1926 in the village of Pirky, Zinkiv district.

In Furtwangen-im-Schwarzwald she worked at the August Hettich, a manufacturer of telecommunication equipment (Fernmeldegerätebau August Hettich). Her further fate is unknown.

Maria Stepanivna Yemets was born on September 16, 1926 in the village of Haponivka (now Yablunivka), Myrhorod district. She completed 7 grades of school.

She described her biography in detail during the post-war investigation: "Before the revolution, my parents were farmers, and after the revolution, in 1933, they joined the collective farm. My father [works – auth.] as a foreman, and my mother did different jobs. My parents were not exiled anywhere. I went to school, finished 7 grades of school, and applied to the medical school in Lokhvytsia, but I did not study because the war broke out.".

During the Nazi occupation, she worked in public yard number 18 until she was conscripted for forced labor on October 3, 1942. Her trip to Furtwangen-im-Schwarzwald took a month, where she was employed at the Friedolin Scherzinger electrical and precision instrumentation company (Friedolin Scherzinger Elektro- und Feinmechanik Apparatebau). Mariia testified about the working conditions there: "In two days we went to work, we worked in the factory all the time. The work was hard and dirty, we worked for 10 hours, and the food was bad, we were convoyed to the factory, and we were not allowed to go out. It was like that for a year, then they started treating us better."

On April 7, 1945, she was transferred to the Dorer farm in the same Furtwangen-im-Schwarzwald.

On October 1, 1945, Mariia returned to Haponivka. She worked first on the local collective farm and then as a teacher in one of the neighboring villages. She did not marry and had no children. She died and was buried in her native village.

Maria Vdovenko was the only identified forced laborer not from Poltava region. She was born on 8 October 1925 in the village of Velyka Yablunivka, Smilyansky (now Cherkasy) district, Cherkasy region.

In Furtwangen-im-Schwarzwald she worked at the Baden watch factory. Her further fate is unknown.

No additional information was found about Olena Kovalenko and those forced laborers who signed with their first names only.