Wisdom From The Front Lines: Where it all Began

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This is the final installment in my series of stories from Ukrainian World War II survivors. I leave you with Maria. I first heard Maria’s story as a sixteen year old, while on a mission trip to Kiev, Ukraine. Her story sparked a passion in me to know more – to understand better how this Great War affected the world.

Maria’s story is the one that started it all. My entire life shifted when I heard her retell of the days she was taken to Germany and forced to build artillery for the enemy. Maria was a delightful woman to speak with. Her eyes danced, moving in rhythm with her words. I will forever be grateful to her for entrusting me with her history.

A story I now share with you.

 “The morning came when we were to go to the station.  My sister Anna and I left together. My older brothers were already gone, fighting on the front for our safety.  Papa was very ill so he could not accompany us.

When we arrived [the Nazis] forced us all to stand in line for hours while they walked around screaming at us.  Finally, we were inspected and separated onto different trains.

When I reached the front of the line, a German woman grabbed my hands and inspected them.  She did the same to Anna.  I found out later that they were looking for young girls with large hands who would be good at physical labor.  I guess my hands were what she wanted because as soon as she looked at them, she pulled me away and pushed me onto a train by myself.  Anna was sent to another train.  I thought I would die of grief and fear that day.

I was only fourteen years old when they sent me away to work in an underground chemical plant.  There were many other children there with me.  Our job was to fill German bullets with gunpowder all day long.  During that time, I never saw the light of day.

We worked long hours with very little food.  For some reason the other children in the camp turned to me for support and protection.  I don’t know why I was given so much responsibility, but I felt that I could not let them down. I soon became very angry as our captivators cut back our meals from two per day to only one per day.  And worse, the food was often infested with bugs.  We were all ill, and some children even died.  I had to do something.

I refused to work one morning and, using broken German, I demanded better treatment.  Instead, the two officers in charge beat me very badly.  It’s a miracle that I survived.

I woke up days later.  A young woman washed my face and as I began to stir, she sang to me.  Her voice was beautiful, and I thought she must be an angel.  It turns out she was a young German nurse who took pity on me, and had been nursing me to health.

I was sent to a textile factory after I recovered.  This was a much nicer job.  I was given regular meals and the work was easier.  But I didn’t stay there long.  After only a few months I was transferred once again, this time to a tank plant.  Here I helped assemble German tanks.  This was terrible work for a sixteen year old girl.

A few months after I arrived, word came that the war was over.  The next day, I tasted freedom for the first time in two years.  I walked out of the terrible camp with great joy, and also great fear.  I didn’t know where I was or how to get home.

After a few days of wandering, I came to a train station.  As a refugee, I had to sneak onto a train just before it left.  I rode wherever I could find room.  Sometimes, I could not find room inside a train car, I and was forced to hang on to the rails outside the car for hours.

After two years of near starvation and hard labor, I finally arrived home.  It was many weeks before I found my family again.  And I found them quite different.

My brothers were all killed in the war. My father had been sent to Babi Yar (a killing ditch outside Kiev, where the Germans killed over 33,000 Jews in three days). He survived this awful place, but not without emotional pain that haunted him. The life went out from his eyes.  He tried desperately to continue to be strong for us girls, but he felt defeated.  He missed my brothers very much.

Anna survived her years in Germany as well.  She had a better time than I did.  She was a servant in the house of a wealthy family.  She was treated with some kindness though she was often scorned and abused verbally.

Those were very hard years for our country.  No one was untouched by tragedy.  Everyone lost a loved one.  But we survived and we persevered.  And now I am an old woman, but I’m happy.  I have a wonderful family, and I am always loved.”

Wisdom From the Front Lines: Saving Grace

Benjamin Semenovich Shapolov grew up in Southern Ukraine, near Odessa. Raised in a family of Bible-believing Christians, Benjamin’s story is unique and awe-inspiring. A well-educated man, Benjamin worked hard throughout the war to protect and save the Jews in his area from both the Germans and the Soviets. His life was miraculously spared on numerous occasions.

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I will never forget the afternoon I spent with this warm, gentle man. He had a kind face, large eyes, and a mouth prone to wide smiles.

This is his story:

I was born into a family of believers, and I knew the Lord from childhood.  My grandparents and parents both taught me strongly to keep the gospel.  I was accustomed to look for, and recognize, the will of God.

Right after my father died (in 1932), the horrible famine of the 1930’s began.  My mother was left with seven children and herself to feed.  It was in these conditions that we lived when the war began.  We were always in need – always hungry.  We often had only weak soup to eat, but the Lord faithfully kept us through that time and no one died.  

In 1937, when I was fifteen, my uncle brought me into the city (Odessa) to live with him.  In 1939, I returned to my mother’s village in the northern region of Odessa as a qualified accountant.

The collective farm that my family lived on nominated me to be their bookkeeper when I returned.  Though I was only seventeen, I was well-educated and willing to help.

Before he died, my father had a good friend who was a Jew.  They often sat in one another’s company and sang hymns together. Early on, our Jewish friend asked the leader of the collective farm to help him build a canteen on his property.  When asked why, this Jew replied that a war with Hitler was fast approaching and this canteen would be a hiding place for the Jews.

The leader of the farm agreed to help and for years this canteen was host to many hiding Jews.  This was a secret – very few people knew about it.  Throughout the war, someone hid inside that canteen everyday.

Because I was the official bookkeeper of the collective farm, it was my duty to issue passports to the villagers.  I and the leader of the collective farm both believed in God and we decided to issue all Jews passports in order to help them.

The Soviets frowned upon giving passports to Jews, but without this proper documentation, they were at the mercy of the fascists. The leader and I decided it would be better to save our countrymen by issuing them passports than to submit to the law of the Soviets.  By issuing out those passports, we were able to save over three hundred Jews in our region.

When we developed these passports, we always left off the fact that a person was Jewish.  Sometimes we had to change a man or a woman’s name from a Jewish name to a Ukrainian name.  Now this was very dangerous work, but  I always knew that I was following the plan of the Lord and I pressed on without fear.

Three times we were betrayed for doing this work, and each time we were sentenced to be hanged.  But the Lord saved us every time, because the Commandant of the German regime who was assigned to our village was a believer in Christ.  His mercy saved us, and we continued to help the Jews.

In 1944, the Germans left our village and the Soviet Army came.  The Soviets demanded to know how so many people in our village survived the occupation so we gave them the list of names of the people that we had saved.  We thought that perhaps we would be commended for our actions, but instead they looked at the list and spoke to us harshly.

For our actions of saving the Jews, the Soviets sent us to a penalty battalion to finish out the war. 

We were sent to the front line without any weapons.  We were told that the only way we could be redeemed was by our blood.  If we were wounded, then our blood would redeem us.  If we were killed – our life would redeem us.

So [at the age of 22], I was taken to the front line without protection.  Without armor or weapons, we had to get very creative in our battle tactics.

We took empty cans and boxes and cut holes in them so that when we threw them they whistled, sounding like incoming bombs. We frightened the Germans so much that they ran, leaving behind all their weapons and armor.  We didn’t have to fire a shot and they all left. 

The Lord saved me many times in those years, and by saving me, he saved many other people.  Those are only the main important points of my personal history.  There are many other stories, but the most important thing to remember is that the Lord saves. 

Because I began my service in the Red Army in the penalty battalion, I was never recognized as being a Soviet soldier.  But that doesn’t matter to me now. It means nothing to me.

I care only of the Lord’s saving grace.  

More Than Just Soldiers: Wisdom From the Front Lines

This is the second installment in my four week series honoring the Ukrainian men and women who fought for their freedom in World War II, or “The Great Patriotic War,” as it is referred to in Ukraine.

Today’s story comes from a man named Oleg Dimitrievich. I met him at a local school one afternoon in Kiev after I finished speaking with a group of students. He heard what I was doing, and asked if he could tell me his story.

Stories From World War II

I will never forget this man. His hands were weathered and rough, nervously ringing his hat as he recalled the memories that haunted him. He told me his story with tears coursing down his cheeks, and he wanted to make sure that I understood that the men and women who fought in this war were more than just soldiers.

You must know that I and my comrades, we were all just ordinary people.  We were not special.  We were just young men and women doing our job.  The battalion I took part in was a fine battalion.  We fought hard for our country.  We were good men – learned men.  Many of the men loved to write poetry.  We were deep thinkers and philosophers and singers.  We were more than just soldiers.”

Oleg Dmitrievich remembered those days of war with raw emotion. He described the heat of the bombs, and the sounds of the bullets as they buzzed by his head. Out of 600 men in his battalion, less than 50 survived.

This is his story:

I was a simple officer in the Great Patriotic War.  When the war began I was still studying in college, so I did not join the front until March of 1942.  I was 23-years-old at the time.

I would like to tell you my impressions of the war.  You see, my memories of that time are not just stories, they are realities.  The deaths, the battles, the bombings – they are all real to me.  You are just listening to these stories, but I was living them.

You must understand that many people in my country have covered up facts about this period of history.  For many years, people have tried to cover up their shame by burying the truth beneath a mountain of propaganda.  We have hidden ourselves from the truth. 

And what is the truth?  Many people do not know that when the Germans first appeared, people in our country, especially those in small villages, accepted them.  They thought that perhaps Germany had come to liberate them from the Soviet Rule.  They thought it was the establishment of a new Revolutionary period.  So, as the Germans marched into the villages, people threw them candy and sweets.  They listened to the German songs and tried to sing along.  This was hard for those of us fighting the war to see and understand.  We felt betrayed by their acceptance of the very people we were trying to overcome.  This is the truth.

There is one particular episode that stands out vividly in my mind.  It was late in the afternoon, and I had somehow gotten separated from the men in my battalion.  I was walking down the road, unsure of where I was when I saw two Soviet soldiers sitting on the side of the road with their backs to me.  I thought that perhaps they were sleeping, but I needed help so I decided to disturb them.  I approached and asked for directions but received no response, so I gently nudged one of them.  It was then that I noticed that they had no heads.  This was a terrible shock.  This was life on the front.  You never knew what horror each day could bring.

In 1944, I took part in the liberation of [the town of] Kam’yanets Podilsky.  It was difficult there.  Kam’yanets Podilsky was a small town surrounded by rolling hills.  There was a large bridge that crossed a deep gully.  This bridge was old and beautiful.  It led to the old fortress.  This fortress is one of the most remarkable sights in our country.  Through determined fighting, the Soviet soldiers had managed to save that fortress from complete destruction.  But they could not keep the Germans out completely.

The Germans had taken control of this town and were monitoring the main bridge.  We worried that we would not be able to usurp them.  So we decided to trick them.  We waited until night to begin our attack.  We shined our tank lights down upon them as bright as we could, so they were unsure of whether we were enemy tanks or their own tanks.  Then, our division rushed forward, and somehow, through that simple trick, we were able to retake the bridge.

After this time, I participated in the liberation of Lviv.  In Lviv, we faced an battalion of Ukrainian rebels called the Banderovtsy.  They were an ugly, terrorous people.  We did not know about them before we got to Lviv.

(Sidebar: The Banderovtsy were a group of men and women who fought zealously under their leader, Stepan Bandera.  Their sole aim was to see Ukraine become an independent nation; therefore, they often fought not only against the Germans, but against the Soviets as well.  There is a great divide between Ukrainians as to whether the Banderovtsy were patriotic soldiers or ruthless killers.  In Western Ukraine, the Bandersovtsy are often hailed and remembered with pride.  But elsewhere, they are often shamefully scorned.)

At one point, we found ourselves in a small village outside of Lviv where wounded soldiers were being treated.  I do not remember the name of this town.  There were thirty-one people in this village when I arrived, and we wanted to evacuate them to a hospital.  I left one morning to get a car to send for the wounded, but by the time I returned, all of them had been slaughtered.  The Banderovtsy had been there.  This was terrible.

We were always on edge during this time of war.  We never knew when an attack would begin.  Fear mounted only in the still moments of the night, when we had nothing but our thoughts to keep us company.  During the day, we did not have time to fear.  You see, fear appears only when you are idle – when you have nothing to do.  But, if you have a goal and know what you are working toward, you are busy and you can neglect your fear. 

This was my experience in the Great Patriotic War.  I feel it is a pity that we had to fight this war.  It seems it should not have happened.  But I am grateful that I took part and helped lead this country to victory over the fascists.  We fought to the victory!

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