Surviving Stalin’s and Hitler’s Regimes
By: Maria Kiciuk
Tags: World War II, Totalitarianism, History, Survival, Communism

The Story of a Young Girl Caught Between Two Totalitarian Regimes

Maria Kiciuk High School Graduation Photo

Seventy-six years ago I was in Berlin and my family worked at the Pertrix factory as Nazi forced laborers. This story is about my family’s experiences, primarily during WWII.

Life in my Village in Western Ukraine

My life story begins in Western Ukraine, in a small peaceful village, surrounded by low lying mountains. Our family consisted of my parents and six children. My parents were farmers, so we all worked very hard. Despite the hard work, I remember my early childhood as a happy one, but all that was about to change.

Looking for a Better Life

Maria’s Parents

My parents were barely seventeen years old when they left Ukraine to escape poverty in their homeland. They met in Yonkers, New York, and were married in a Ukrainian church after immigrating to the United States in 1910. My oldest sister Katrusia was born in Yonkers. Some forty years later four of their children were married in the same Ukrainian church.

Life was good in the United States. My parents worked hard and saved money, but good fortune could not outweigh my mother’s homesickness, so they decided to go back to Ukraine. They now had enough money to buy property in a neighboring village. Little did they know that improving their life would make them a target.

Caught Between Two Totalitarian Regimes

In the fall of 1939, WWII started and the Soviet Communist regime took over Western Ukraine as part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This was a treaty between Stalin and Hitler, so for the first two years of the war, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were allies. To this day Russia is attempting to hide this fact by alleging that WWII started in June of 1941.

My Family

Kocur Family 1929 (Left to right back row): Anna, Katrusia, Uncle Mychailo. (Left to right front row): Mother, Theodor, Father, Mykola

By the time the war started, my oldest sister Katrusia was married and lived in a city, quite a distance from our village. My oldest brother Mykola and my sister Anna were in a boarding school. My brother Theodor, my sister Sonia and I were still at home with my parents. I was six years old at the time.

Taken in by Kind Relatives

Western Ukraine, where my family lived was now part of the Soviet Union, or what we later referred to as “The Evil Empire.”

One day in December of 1939, Communist officials came to our home. They told my parents that it was no longer our house. The house and all our property now belonged to the state. There was nothing we could do. We had to leave.

Fortunately, our cousin took us in. It wasn’t easy for him. His house was small. He had his own family and now five more of us. Very soon we understood how lucky we were to have been thrown out of our house. Our fate could have been much worse.

Arrests and Deportations

Gulag — Slave Labor Camp

One night in February of 1940, in the middle of the winter, when the cold was unbearable and the snow was waist deep, my parents heard loud voices outside speaking in Russian, which was unusual in Western Ukraine at the time. My father was sure that they came to get him. The Soviet authorities often arrested people at night.

But we were not on the list that night. That night they took our cousin’s neighbor and his family to Siberia. That same night they took thousands of Ukrainians and shipped them to the Gulags for slave labor where most of them perished from lack of food and shelter.

Still fearful that he might be arrested, my father decided to go to my Uncle Mychailo who lived in a different part of the village, so he plodded through the snow in the middle of the night. As he approached the house, he saw lights on and heard people crying. That night my uncle and his family were taken to Siberia. We never saw or heard from his family again.

“Enemies of the People”

Maria’s sister Katrusia’s home which was seized by the Soviets

From then on people in our village were afraid to help us. They began to understand that in the eyes of the Soviet authorities, we were considered to be “enemies of the people.” This was not only because we were somewhat better off, but more importantly, because my parents were more educated, knew how people lived in the U.S., and could refute Soviet propaganda. No one was allowed to help enemies of the people. Our cousin was now afraid to provide shelter for us. We had to leave.

My parents had to decide what to do next to save their family. They placed each child with a different relative, in a different village or city. I lived with my sister’s in laws. We later found out that the Soviet authorities also confiscated my sister’s house and property so that her family became homeless.

My father found work far away from our village. My mother didn’t have a place to live, so she walked from village to village and spent a few days with each child.

Nazi Invasion of Ukraine

The Soviet Communist occupation was followed by the Nazi occupation. In June 1941 the Nazis attacked the Soviet Union and by the end of November occupied all of Ukraine.

As soon as the Soviets left Western Ukraine, my family went back to our village and reoccupied our house. We didn’t ask anyone for permission and no one told us we couldn’t go back. We now had to work even harder than before to make the farm functional again.

Nazi Occupation of Ukraine

The Eye of War — Ukraine 1941-42 by Dieter Keller

In order to support their military expansion, the Nazis implemented Lebensraum, a policy of conquering territory for German use. In the process they set out to eliminate Jews and turn Slavs into slaves. Jews and Slavic people were considered to be Untermenschen (subhumans).

The Nazis did not want an independent Ukraine. They imprisoned leaders of the independence movement and sent them to concentration camps, where many perished. Others were assassinated by Soviet agents.

Secretly Supplying Food

Jaroslaw Kiciuk, Maria’s husband

The Nazis needed food and raw materials and took as much as they could, creating food shortages, especially in the cities. They did not allow people to bring food from villages. My sister Katrusia and her two children spent one summer with us because they lived in a city and didn’t have enough food.

Jaroslaw, the man I later met and married, tried to help his family. He got a job as a manager of a mill, so he could bring some grain to his family. Because bringing food into cities was forbidden, he had to get off the train two stops before reaching his destination and walk, avoiding main roads so as not to be caught.

Gulag Labor Camp

Mykola Kocur, Maria’s brother

The Nazis also needed workers. They would round up young people and ship them to forced labor camps. More than two million Ukrainians suffered that fate and my brother Mykola was one of them.

For many years we did not know what happened to him. It was only much later we found out that he had been taken by the Nazis and after the war handed over to Soviet authorities as part of repatriation.

The Soviets sent Mykola to Kolyma, a remote region in Siberia beyond the Arctic Circle, known for its harsh climate and its Gulag labor camps, where the mortality rate reached 80% and where millions of prisoners were exterminated during the Stalin regime. There he spent almost ten years working in the gold mines as a slave laborer. He was granted amnesty during the Khrushchev era but was not allowed to return to Ukraine.

Ukraine’s Freedom Fighters

Young people in Ukraine tried to find a way to avoid being taken to Germany as forced laborers. Many of them joined the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which was formed in 1942 and fought against both the Nazis and the Soviets.

My future husband was one of those freedom fighters. For three years he lived in the forest fighting for Ukraine’s independence. In the summer of 1947, two years after the war ended, a group of about 300 freedom fighters were given the task of reaching the American Zone in Germany in order to inform the free world that Ukraine was continuing its fight for independence.

It took my husband and his group about four months to finally reach the free world. They hid in the woods during the day and walked at night. They ate whatever they could find in the fields. My husband said that the last two or three weeks all they had to eat were grapes. Some of them died along the way, but most of those who had set out from Ukraine reached the American zone and were able to tell their story.

Escape From the Soviet Communists

My family left Ukraine on June 30, 1944 as the Soviet Red Army was approaching once again. One morning, and I remember it vividly, I woke up very early and heard my parents whispering. They were trying to decide what to do. I was only 11 years old, but I dreaded what might happen if we stayed.

Fortunately, my parents decided to leave. It was not an easy decision. My parents were farmers, owned property, farm animals, and a nice house. We had no place to go and no specific plans, yet the decision was made to leave everything and face the unknown in a foreign land. They took a wagon and two horses and left our home and our village, not realizing that it would be forever.

There were six of us — my parents, my brother Theodor, my sisters Anna and Sonia, and I. My parents tried to let my sister Katrusia know that we were leaving, but that proved too difficult to do.

It was summer, so we slept in the wagon. Occasionally, we would find an abandoned house and stay there for a day or two.

Stopped by Nazi Soldiers

Maria, cousin Vasyl, sister Anna

We kept moving west before the approaching front. We were not the only ones trying to escape. Thousands of Ukrainians were leaving their homes and their belongings in an effort to flee, so groups of caravans were formed.

Our journey to freedom ended abruptly when the Nazis confiscated our carriage and horses, put us on freight trains and took us to a forced labor camp, first in Linz, Austria; then we were transported to Berlin.

My sister Anna was put to work in a restaurant in Linz. She was not with us when they took us to Berlin and was left behind. It was only after the war that my father found her through a newspaper ad and my cousin, Vasyl Kocur, brought her illegally from Austria to Germany. Part of our family was reunited once again.

Life in the Forced Labor Camp

One of the Pertrix forced labor camps (Now the Nazi Forced Labor Documentation Center)

I don’t remember much about my life in the forced labor camp in Berlin. I remember that I was always cold and that the food was bad — some kind of broth and a piece of stale bread. There was no privacy of any kind; several families slept in a large room, full of bunk beds. I also remember being afraid of the air raids.

2.2 million Ukrainians worked as Nazi forced laborers. Ukrainians from western Ukraine were forced to wear the symbol P and were often mislabeled as Poles. Ukrainians from eastern Ukraine had to wear the symbol OST and were mislabeled as Russians. Unfortunately this misinformation continues to the present time.

The Red Army was approaching Berlin and we had to flee once again. Somehow my father, God bless his soul, found a way to save his family.

Escape from Pertrix

One of the Pertrix forced labor camps (Now the Nazi Forced Labor Documentation Center)

Early in the morning of February 22, 1945, possibly during an air raid, as the laborers were headed for work, our family crept through a hole in the fence and left the camp. Miraculously, we escaped, just a few days before the camp was bombed and just a few weeks before the Red Army occupied Berlin.

We took a train and headed south in the direction of Bavaria. We stopped in Forchheim, which later became the American zone, and there we worked for various farmers during the planting and the harvesting season. We joined a Displaced Persons camp as soon as the Americans began to organize them.

We felt that we had finally overcome all the obstacles and were now safe. But it wasn’t so.

Policy of Repatriation

Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill at the Yalta Conference in 1945

We had to overcome one more hurdle — the forced repatriation to the Soviet Union. There was an agreement reached by Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin at the Yalta Conference that all former Soviet citizens had to go back to the Soviet Union with no regard to individual wishes. Soviet agents were roaming the camps, trying to ensure compliance. My brother remembers that our parents were taken into custody in an effort to force us to go back.

Thousands of people were handed over to Soviet authorities and hundreds committed suicide rather than be forced to go back. Finally, the forced repatriation policy was stopped.

Life in the Displaced Persons Camp

We stayed in Germany four additional years. We were assigned to a Displaced Persons (DP) camp in Erlangen, a beautiful city, not heavily damaged in the war because of its many hospitals and universities. My father worked there for the American army and served as an interpreter when needed.

I have fond memories of my life in the Displaced Persons camp. We had regular church services and a school, which I attended. We had a Scout organization and all kinds of activities that I was involved in. We also had a choir, which I belonged to since I liked to sing.

German Hochschule

Maria, second row, right

In 1948 things began to change. People were leaving the camp and going to different countries. In the fall, there were not enough students to form a class I could attend, so during my last year in Germany I attended a German Hochschule. It was not easy for me because all the subjects were in German. I was excused from Scout and other activities and devoted all my time to studying.

I am sorry I didn’t keep in touch with any of my high school friends, but in the United States I was overwhelmed with new responsibilities and had no time to think about anything else.

Safe at Last

Theodor, Maria, Sonia, Anna with spouses Dorothy, Jaroslaw Kiciuk, Raymond Thomas and Joseph Ivanick

The United States became our new home and we are most grateful for that. The freedoms that non-totalitarian and non-communist countries enjoy should not be taken for granted.

We have often wondered why we were spared. Was it because the repatriation policy was finally terminated? Was it because my father spoke some English and his sister in the United States was ready to sponsor us? Was it perhaps that the person in charge of our camp was a kind-hearted person? This we will never know, but once again our family was saved.

My siblings and I consider it a miracle that we somehow survived the war as well as the Soviet and Nazi occupations.

Kocur Family in Front of Family Home in Yonkers, NY

Siblings Reunite After 50 Years

We were happy to be reunited with our sister Katrusia and our brother Mykola when Ukraine gained independence in 1991, some 50 years after last seeing them. Unfortunately, both our parents died before ever seeing their two oldest children again.

Remembering the Victims

Burial of victims of the Soviet Communist regime

As a newly independent country, Ukraine’s borders opened up and I was able to return for a visit. My husband, who made the trip with two of our daughters, finally met with his brother, who he hadn’t seen in over 50 years.

On this trip in 1992, when visiting my village, my husband and daughters came across a sobering scene. The village was having a funeral for the hundreds of victims of the Soviet regime. Bodies that had been thrown into a pit were dug up, placed in caskets, and properly buried. According to villagers, another 800 or so bodies were buried under the train tracks. Similar funeral processions were held throughout Ukraine. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union people had been too afraid to even mention any of this happened.

My Family in the United States

Kocur Family Reunion Circa 1999

My family, my brother’s, and both my sisters’ families are doing well in the United States.

The Kiciuk Family

Maria with her husband and six children

I am proud to say that my children are fluent not only in English but also in Ukrainian.

Surviving Two Totalitarian Regimes

Jaroslaw and Maria 60th wedding anniversary in 2013

My life story is similar to that of many of my countrymen. It is also rather closely intertwined with the history of my birth country Ukraine, oppressed by the repressive regimes of two terrible dictators of the 20th century — Stalin and Hitler.

Prof. Timothy Snyder, a Yale University historian, states that during WWII, Ukraine suffered more losses than any other European country. If you add to that the losses Ukraine suffered during the Holodomor, the famine genocide perpetrated by Stalin in 1932–1933 which amounted to millions, the losses are staggering.

In his speech to Bundestag on Germany’s historical responsibility, Prof. Snyder stresses that Germany’s responsibility is primarily to Ukraine and not to Russia. All of Ukraine was overrun by the Nazis for the duration of the war, whereas only 5% of Russia was occupied and only for a short period of time. Thus, Ukraine was exploited by the Nazis much more than Russia was.

Dr. Maria Kocur Kiciuk

©Maria Kiciuk. 2021