"There were girls here": "greetings" from Ukrainian Ostarbeiters found on the walls of a bomb shelter in Germany

Historians found a "greeting" from Ukrainian Ostarbeiters on the walls of a bomb shelter in Germany. Local historians from the NGO After the Silence learned about the fate of girls from the Cherkasy region who were taken to the Reich for forced labor during World War II.

The researchers contacted Lyudmyla Diduk, the head of the school museum in the village of Mokra Kalyhirka, after handwritten names of 14 residents of her village were found on the walls of an old bomb shelter in Grevenbroch, Germany. The woman told Suspilne how the investigation of the disturbing discovery is going on.

The museum's head, Lyudmyla Diduk, said that the collection of the lyceum in the village of Mokra Kalyhirka includes notebooks with inked inscriptions, old clothes, and military artifacts. "We conduct a lot of research. The latest one we started working on is about Ostarbeiters," she noted.

It is known that Ostarbeiters were people taken by the Nazis from the eastern occupied territories to work in Germany as forced laborers. In general, according to experts, from the end of 1941 to the beginning of 1944, 2.4 million of our compatriots were deported from Ukraine to the Third Reich. Most of them were girls, Ukrinform reports.

The photo with the inscriptions on the wall of the German bomb shelter was the reason for the new research, emphasized Lyudmyla Diduk. "German researchers found inscriptions left there by Ukrainian Ostarbeiters. The question is how they were preserved," said the museum director.

The inscriptions were found by German experts on the wall of an old bomb shelter in October 2024. Ukrainian historian Andriy Usach said that to find out more, researchers from Germany turned to the NGO After the Silence, which he heads.

"The topic of forced labor is one that we have been working on for years. The most difficult thing was to identify people. Because there were only surnames and initials. We turned to Ms. Lyudmyla, who works in the Mokrokalahirsk museum," the historian noted.

There were 14 names on the wall whose fate was unknown for eighty years. "We sent out a call to all the settlements of our community. The search is ongoing. Some names have already been discovered and researched," said Usach.

In order to find information about the girls who were forced to work in Germany, Lyudmyla Diduk looked up the archives of the local village council. "I wrote down all the Ostarbeiters in Mokra Kalyhirka and Sukha Kalyhirka. I immediately did research on how many people lived there at the time, in 1944-1946. I counted everything," she emphasized.

During the research, we managed to find out information about the fate of the five Ukrainian women mentioned on the wall. "There was a bomb shelter for a weaving factory in that town, and these girls may have worked there. And I have an idea that they may have lived there," suggested the head of the museum in Mokra Kalyhirka.

Andriy Usach noted that their organization turned to the Cherkasy archives to research the "filtration cases."

"All deported workers underwent so-called filtration. So far, we have found filtration files for three girls. These women did not work in Grechenbroich, but in neighboring towns. They said that before the Allied army's offensive, they were transported all over Germany. Obviously, during one of these moves, they were hiding in this bomb shelter," the historian added.

Lyudmyla Diduk will research the biographies of other women together with local students. A special expedition was organized at the school for this purpose.

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