Bekenntnis des Ostarbeiters Nr. 997 / Исповедь Остарбайтера N 997
Confession of Ostarbeiter Nr 997

Author(s): Leonid Jekel
Subject(s): WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), History of the Holocaust, Politics of History/Memory
Published by: CEEOL Collections / Digital Reproductions
Keywords: forcved labour und Nazism;
Summary/Abstract: For half a century already, Vasily Semyonovich Boykachev is carrying pain in his heart like a splinter in his body. As a fifteen-year-old boy, he was deported to Germany for forced labor. He worked in a war factory where bullets were manufactured. He never told anything about it, not even to the wife and son who are closest to him. A strong feeling of guilt towards his wife, who was a front-line doctor, towards relatives, fellow villagers and simply unknown people because of his forced participation in the human-killing work always tormented him like a terrible nightmare. He thought with a pounding heart that the deadly bullets, which his child labor had also been involved in making, could have injured or killed his future bride, or killed or maimed his compatriots who were fighting for their homeland. For half a century he asks the Lord God to forgive him and take away this sin from him...

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