Mariya Grigoryevna Shabanova
Mariya Grigoryevna Shabanova (née Klimenko) was born on 25 April 1922 in the village of Preobrashena, Ukraine. Before the war, she worked as a mining engineer. In the autumn of 1942, she and other young people from her village were deported to Germany for forced labour. After liberation, she returned to her home. Mariya Shabanova returned to Cologne in 1991 as part of the City Visit Programme for former forced labourers and spoke about her experiences as a forced labourer.
Forced labour in a Cologne household
Mariya Shabanova described that the journey to Germany in freight wagons took two weeks. In Cologne, all the deportees were taken to an assembly point, where companies and private individuals were able to select forced labourers for their factories and households.
Mariya Klimenko worked as a domestic servant for the family of businessman Otto Schröder. Although she was given her own room, her living conditions were harsh. She worked in the house from five in the morning until eleven at night, cleaning, washing, cooking, shopping and looking after the children. She also had to work as a cleaner in Otto Schröder’s factory. Except for the first two months, she was not paid for her work. Mariya Klimenko only had Sundays off. On these days, she met other forced labourers in the nearby parks.
Friendship and resistance
As Polish and Soviet forced labourers were barred from most public places in Germany, Mariya Klimenko had little opportunity to meet and make friends with other forced labourers outside the confines of her workplace. Public parks became a central meeting place where forced labourers from Russia, Ukraine, France and other countries came together to dance and sing traditional songs. Mariya Klimenko came into contact with young forced labourers who were active in the underground, carrying out acts of sabotage and assassinating SS men. She took part in some minor actions and kept in touch with the others.
Arrest and torture in the Gestapo prison
In October 1944, Mariya Klimenko was arrested by the Gestapo for her alleged involvement in the activities of the underground group. She spent five months in the Gestapo prison in the EL-DE building, where she was repeatedly interrogated and tortured. During this time, she had to witness a friend dying as a result of mistreatment. She shared her cell with twelve other prisoners. The cell was very damp, there were not even straw sacks and the prisoners had relieve themselves in a bowl. The same bowl was used for their meals, which consisted of watery soup.
Like many other prisoners in the Gestapo prison, Mariya Klimenko left inscriptions on the walls of her cell. On 19 December 1944, she wrote on the wall of cell 1:
"Here sat Mariya Klimenko from the Voronesh region, Nishneduvansk district, Preobrashena village. She was arrested despite her innocence. It is my predestined fate that lies ahead of my life. In short, because of my weak character."
Escape
In early March 1945, Mariya Klimenko and a friend escaped from the EL-DE building with the help of a Polish interpreter, Stanislaw Adamczyk. Shortly before she was to be taken for further interrogation, a squadron of American bombers approached Cologne, and in the chaos of the air raid alert, Adamczyk directed the two women to a hearse used to transport executed prisoners from the Gestapo prison to the cemetery. They managed to escape, hiding among the corpses. They gave Adamczyk two gold rings as a token of their gratitude for his help.
Liberation, return home and new harassments
Soon after, American troops liberated Cologne. Mariya Klimenko went back to work for a farmer, then lived in a DP camp for a while before finally returning home. There she worked as an accountant at a biological research institute in Lysychansk, Ukraine. Because of her time in Germany, she was regularly harassed and verbally abused in her everyday life and at work. For the rest of her life she felt despised for having been forced to go to Germany.
When she returned to the EL-DE House in Cologne in 1991, staff at the Documentation Centre asked her about her inscription on the wall. Mariya Shabanova said, “I had long forgotten the inscription on the wall of my cell in the Gestapo prison. You reminded me of it. I thank the Cologne anti-fascists for preserving these wall inscriptions for posterity”. In the cell where she had been imprisoned, she laid flowers for her friend and the many other victims who died there.
