Nina Andrejewskaja (married name Schalagina) “And there we stood, for as long as we could still hear the shuffle of the wooden clogs ...”

Nina Andrejewskaja was forced to look on as the German occupiers burnt her native city to the ground in the autumn of 1943. She was deported along with her mother and sister to Saxony to perform forced labour; there they were separated. The fifteen-year-old attempted to flee, but was apprehended by the Gestapo. After interrogations and abuse, she was committed to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in the autumn of 1944. In Taucha, a Buchenwald subcamp, she was put to work manufacturing grenades. She managed to flee when the camp was cleared. She found her mother and sister near Chemnitz and returned home with them. She learned German and later worked for a German diplomat in Moscow.