“The Volga was burning...”

by Dr rer. publ. Werner Wüthrich

1988 was the time of perestroika – the time when the East-West conflict was overcome – and years of the most severe economic crisis were lying ahead. The City of Cologne entered into a city partnership with Volgograd, with the aim of establishing closer contacts and of fostering human and cultural exchange. Immediately afterwards, the “Verein zur Förderung der Städtepartnerschaft Köln–Wolgograd” (Association for the Promotion of Town Twinning Cologne-Volgograd) was founded in Cologne, and the “Mir Working Group” was formed. The exchange was lively and deepened when the Cologne Association was founded a few years later in Volgograd.

In 1991 the “Peace Working Group” made contact with former Eastern workers (“Ostarbeiter”) from the city which had been called Stalingrad, who had been deported to Germany for forced labour at the time of the battle in autumn 1942 and in winter 1943, and who had not yet received any serious compensation. Within the framework of this project, the association arranged correspondencies, provided humanitarian aid and, in urgent emergencies, also helped directly. A fund collected donations and soon had considerable financial resources at its disposal. In 1998, the “Peace Working Group” addressed a survey to its elderly friends in Volgograd who had witnessed and survived the Battle of Stalingrad as young people or had been deported to Germany for forced labour. They were asked to write down their memories of that time. The response and the number of reports were enormous. As early as 1999, the people of Cologne received their friends from Volgograd as visitors, and readings took place in the “Theater am Sachsenring” and in the newly founded “Lev-Kopelev-Forum”. These were attended by inhabitants of Cologne together with the contemporary witnesses who had travelled there. In 2002, the association published the documentation at hand with fifty impressive personal reports both in the Russian original and the German translation.

Reports from the war: Hunger, cold, death ...

Fifty testimonies are available today from contemporary witnesses who witnessed the time of the battle as young people. They endured the most adverse circumstances holding out, or were “collected” by German soldiers as able to work, and sent to Germany as forced labourers. This concerned young women in particular – the men were in the army. These reports should be heard and read. They are a memorial for reconciliation and peace.
The authorities in Stalingrad were surprised by the rapid advance of the 6th Army in the summer of 1942 and failed to evacuate the city’s civilian population in time. In addition, Stalin had forbidden evacuation and escape because it would have weakened the morale of the troops.
Galina Mikhailovna (then 21 years old): “The 23 August 1942 was a Sunday. The morning was quiet and warm. But at noon the sky became black with airplanes, and the bombing began. It was hot, many houses were made of wood, and terrible fires broke out. Houses were on fire. [...] Houses collapsed; the earth was burning; the Volga was burning.”
“And the planes were screaching and they went on and on dropping bombs, they went on and on. My father was killed on 19 September; we buried him in the yard.”
Konstantin Dmitryevich (then 12 years old): “On 23 August 1942, the first massive bombardments of the city began. As a result the city was practically destroyed. The supply was interrupted. [...] The oil depot was destroyed; hundreds of waggons were destroyed on the railway embankment. [...] For days, sometimes even at night, I went into the houses that had been destroyed in this hail of bombs, looking for food. – Wheat, flour ... At night I dragged home water from a spring. Various vegetables grew in the vegetable garden next to our house. [...] As a result of all these things, we were constantly witnessing the deaths of many of the city’s inhabitants. We took shelter from the bombings and the shelling in an earth hut or in a tunnel under the railway embankment. [...] But every day it got worse for us. Klava, my little sister, became ill, and my strength, too, was dwindling from hunger. Sometimes I went to the German kitchen and collected potato peelings. Once I brought a dead dog with me, somehow we skinned him and ate him. But mostly we went hungry for several days together. [...] One morning we woke up and our mother was dead. Somehow we dragged her out, laid her in the snow next to the wall of a destroyed building, covered her with rags and then filled the ground with snow.”
Konstantin comments on the desperate situation of the German soldiers in January 1943, when the 6th Army was locked up by the Russian army, and no longer had access to any supplies: “The Germans, lice-ridden, starved to death, frozen to the marrow by the cold and the strong wind, became like wild animals. All the warm things they were able to take from the inhabitants they kept for themselves. The Germans took scarves away from women, tied them together to form blankets, and wore those. On their feet, they wore straw boots.” (p. 304–306)