A Soviet woman’s confession about her survival and resistance in captivity
Before you judge me or try to understand the name I’ve borne all these years, you must imagine what Ukraine was like in the winter of 1942. Back then, there were no laws, no sufficient food, and for us women, there was no honor. Swastikas covered the government buildings of Kyiv, and German officers strode through our streets like masters of the world, smelling of expensive eau de cologne and leather, while my people cooked soup from tree bark.
In this world, where death was the only certainty of daily life, I decided I wouldn’t be treated like cattle. I am 73 years old now. For almost half a century, I kept this secret, out of fear of the Soviet police, out of fear of the KGB, out of fear of the contempt of my neighbors and even my own children. The history books my grandchildren read in school tell of tank battles, great generals, and heroism at the front.
But no one speaks of the silent war that took place in the hotel rooms requisitioned by the Wehrmacht and in the country houses where SS officers sought to forget the blood spilled during the day. I am one of the few who remained to tell how we turned the enemy’s pleasure into his burial.
They considered us subservient. They considered us invisible. They saw me only as a pretty doll, a body to be used and discarded. It was their mistake. A mistake that cost dozens of them their lives. I never fired a single shot, yet my hands are stained with blood, just like the hands of every Red Army soldier.
If you are hearing this, know that I am not asking for forgiveness. I am only asking to be remembered. My name was not what it is now. In that other life, before the sky above us was torn apart by the roar of Messerschmitts, I was simply Lyudmila. I was 22 years old. I was studying philology, loved the poetry of the Silver Age, and dreamed of becoming a literature teacher.
My world smelled of old books, lilacs in the botanical garden, and my mother’s cabbage pies. I had a fiancé, Andrey, an engineer with kind eyes and a shy smile. We planned our wedding for August 1941. We argued about trifles, chose names for our future children, and firmly believed that our lives would be long and happy.
How naive we were! When the voice from the loudspeaker announced the war on June 22nd, we didn’t realize it meant the end of the world. We thought it wouldn’t last long. We thought the Red Army would stop them at the border. But the war rolled towards us like an avalanche.
Andrei went to the front in the very first days. I remember him at the train station, his gray coat much too big for him. He didn’t turn around. I never saw him again. Then the bombing raids began. At first it was frightening, then it became routine, and then they came, the Germans. I remember the day they marched into Kyiv.
September 19, 1941. There was a strange, oppressive silence. Then came the roar of motorcycles. They rode confidently, sleeves rolled up, laughing, filming everything with their cameras. They looked like tourists on safari, and we were the animals. The hell they called the “New Order” had begun.
The first thing to disappear was the food. Hunger isn’t just the desire to eat. Hunger is a monster that lives inside you and sucks the life out of you. A month later, we were eating wallpaper paste and boiling leather belts. People collapsed in the street and never got up again. My mother died in November, quietly in her sleep; she simply never woke up.
Her heart stopped from exhaustion. I was alone in a cold apartment where the water in the pipes was frozen and the windows were boarded up with plywood. I sold everything: books, jewelry, furniture, even Andrej’s clothes. But it was only enough for a few loaves of bread on the black market. I became a shadow.
My hair fell out and my gums bled. I knew I’d be next. And then came the election. A non-election. Establishments for Germans opened in the city: restaurants, casinos, hotels. They needed staff, cleaners, dishwashers, waitresses, and of course, women for “special services.” I was young.
Even exhaustion couldn’t completely conceal the features of my face that they found attractive. High cheekbones, large, bright eyes, “Aryan looks,” as several of them later said, running their fingers along my cheek. I got a job as a dishwasher in the kitchen of the Continental Hotel, which housed the headquarters of the High Command.
It was warm there, it smelled of roast meat, chocolate, and real coffee—smells that made my head spin. I ate the leftovers from their plates, hidden in the corner: pieces of untouched schnitzel, buttered bread crusts. I felt like an animal, but I survived. I tried to be invisible. I wore a shapeless cloak, hid my hair under a headscarf, and kept my gaze lowered.
But there was no hiding in a place like that. The officers entered the kitchen. They laughed, spoke loudly in their barking language, and pinched the girls. I saw them looking at us, not as people, but as things, as trophies. To them, we were part of a conquered country. If they wanted to take something, they took it.
One evening, the manager, a collaborator, a slippery type with lecherous eyes, approached me. He said the colonel wanted his dinner brought to his room and the maid was ill. He looked me up and down and said, “Get ready, put down your bag, and relax. If it suits the colonel, you’ll get a can of stew.”
I knew what that meant. I wasn’t stupid. I went up the stairs, the tray with the silver lid in my hand, and every step echoed in my ears. My legs felt like cotton wool. I wanted to throw the tray away and run, but there was no escape. There was a curfew outside, and it was minus 20 degrees Celsius.
In that room I saw death, but he didn’t look like a skeleton with a scythe. Instead, he looked like a tired, middle-aged man in an open uniform, sitting in an armchair with a cigar. He was polite, frighteningly polite. He offered me a seat. He poured me some wine. I drank it, and the wine tasted like vinegar, but it numbed the fear.
What happened next, I tried to erase from my memory for forty years. I detached myself from my body. I observed everything from the side, from the ceiling. I saw this enemy, this murderer of my people, touching me, and I could do nothing. I didn’t cry, I didn’t scream, I simply lay there and counted the cracks in the plaster.
When he was finished, he gave me a chocolate bar and some stamps. He patted me on the shoulder like a dog. I walked out of the hotel into the cold night, the damn chocolate bar in my hand, and threw up in the middle of a snowdrift. I felt dirty, dirtier than the dirt under my boots. I wanted to die, but I didn’t.
I went back. Hunger was stronger than shame, and they noticed me. I became their favorite. I was moved from the dishwasher to the hallway. They dressed me in a beautiful dress and applied bright lipstick they had brought back from Paris. I became part of their luxurious life amidst the plague.
I smiled at the murderers. I poured them schnapps. I listened to them boast about their victories, to them discussing how many “subhumans” they had shot that day. I learned German, though I hid it. I became the perfect doll: beautiful, quiet, approachable. A black hole of hatred grew inside me.
This hatred was cold and heavy as stone. Two months later, a boy, a ragged child of about ten, like thousands of others, approached me on the street. He bumped into me, seemingly casually, and slipped a note into my coat pocket. I read it with trembling hands in the bathroom. It said: “We know where you work. We know what you do. You can be a henchman of the fascists or you can become a retaliator. If you still have a conscience, come to the ruins of the church in Podil tomorrow.”
I went. I didn’t know whether my own people would kill me for treason or grant me salvation. There, in the cellar of a ruined house, I met a man known only as Uncle Vasya. He was missing two fingers on his left hand, and his eyes were as lifeless as mine. He didn’t preach to me. He simply placed a small glass vial on the table.
The liquid inside was clear as a tear. “It doesn’t work immediately,” he said in a dry voice. “No foaming at the mouth, no sudden convulsions. That’s thallium. The person becomes weak, their hair falls out, their kidneys fail. The doctors will write: ‘Heart failure or bad vodka.’ You’ll be with them, drinking with them, killing them slowly, one by one.”
I looked at the bottle. In that glass lay my life and my death. If they found me, the Gestapo would torture me for weeks. But in that moment, I felt something I hadn’t felt since the war began. I felt power. I was no longer a victim. I was a hunter. I took the bottle and hid it in the seam of my bra, right next to my heart.
“I will do it,” I said.
Uncle Vasya nodded: “Don’t get caught and don’t fall in love. To her you’re a toy, to us a weapon. Forget that you’re a woman, you’re a soldier now.”
Thus began my double life. During the day I slept soundly, without dreams. In the evenings I put on a mask, silk stockings, perfume, and smiled. I entered the casino, that devil’s den, and searched for my victim. My first target was the Major of the Quartermaster Service, a fat, sweaty man responsible for supplying the front with food.
He loved cognac and young girls. He chose me. He thought he was buying himself a night of pleasure. He didn’t realize he was buying a one-way ticket. I remember my hands trembling as I poured him a glass. I had to distract him. I had to be seductive as I dripped death into his glass.
“To victory!” he barked, raising his glass.
“To victory,” I whispered, looking into his eyes.
Und er trank. Er trank alles aus. In jener Nacht begriff ich, dass das Schrecklichste nicht das Töten ist. Das Schrecklichste ist, in den Armen desjenigen zu liegen, den man gerade getötet hat, und zu warten. Warten, bis er einschläft, seinen Atem zu hören, die Wärme seines Körpers zu spüren und zu wissen, dass das Uhrwerk in ihm bereits in Gang gesetzt wurde.
Es war mein erstes Kreuz auf dem unsichtbaren Friedhof, aber bei Weitem nicht das letzte. Ich lernte die Kunst des Lügens. Ich lernte, über ihre Witze zu lachen, obwohl ich ihnen am liebsten mit einem Tafelmesser die Kehle durchgeschnitten hätte. Ich lernte, ein charmanter Tod zu sein. Sie wechselten Frauen wie Handschuhe, aber zu mir kehrten sie zurück. Ich wurde unter den Stabsoffizieren zu einer Art Legende.
Sie nannten mich die „russische Schönheit mit den eisigen Augen“. Wenn sie nur wüssten, warum meine Augen so eisig waren. Ich sah darin keine Männer, sondern Ziele. Jeden Abend, auf dem Weg zur Arbeit, verabschiedete ich mich vom Leben. Ich wusste, ein einziger Fehler – ein Tropfen daneben, eine zitternde Stimme, ein unnötiger Blick – und sie würden mich mit einem Schild mit der Aufschrift „Partisanin“ auf dem Marktplatz aufhängen.
Doch die Angst war verschwunden. Sie war der Aufregung gewichen. Der Aufregung eines Spielers, der mit dem Tod Roulette spielt. Und in diesem Spiel stand nicht nur mein Leben auf dem Spiel, sondern auch das Leben hunderter sowjetischer Soldaten, die diese Kreaturen nicht morgen töten würden, weil sie heute in ihren Betten an einer unbekannten Krankheit sterben würden. Der Tod wurde zu meinem Alltag.
Hätte man mich damals, 1943, gefragt, was ich empfand, als ein weiterer Offizier, bereits vergiftet, aber noch am Leben, neben mir aufs Kissen fiel, hätte ich die Wahrheit gesagt. Ich empfand nichts. Der Krieg raubt einem die Fähigkeit, Entsetzen zu empfinden. Der erste Mord ließ mich erschaudern. Der zweite – kalten Schweiß. Der dritte – nur noch Erschöpfung.
Ich verwandelte mich in einen Mechanismus. Tagsüber war ich Ljudmila, ein bescheidenes Mädchen, das im Festsaal die Böden wischte und die Tische deckte. Nachts wurde ich zum Schatten, zum Todesengel mit Lippenstift. Das Continental Hotel wurde zu meinem persönlichen Kriegsschauplatz, wo das Bett ein Schützengraben und die Schnapsflasche eine Granate war.
Ich lernte, sie am Geruch zu unterscheiden. Die Infanteristen rochen nach billigem Tabak, Schweiß und Waffenöl. Die SS-Offiziere rochen nach teurem Leder, französischem Cognac und eiskalter Grausamkeit. Die Piloten rochen nach Benzin und der Angst, die sie hinter lautem Lachen zu verbergen suchten. Sie alle kamen zu mir, um Wärme zu finden, die Illusion von Heimat, einen Moment der Vergessenheit, doch was sie fanden, war ein langsames Verblassen.
Thallium was the perfect ally. It didn’t kill instantly, but bought me time to escape. In the mornings, they woke up with headaches and blamed them on a hangover. By midday, their fingers were numb, and by evening, their legs gave out. A week later, they were buried with a diagnosis of heart failure or an acute infection.
The hospital was overflowing with wounded soldiers from the front. They didn’t have time to perform an autopsy on every officer who had drunk too much. My list kept growing. But it wasn’t just a list of the dead; it was a library full of secrets. Uncle Vasya quickly realized that my body granted access not only to the enemy’s stomachs but also to their tongues.
Alcohol and being close to them loosened their tongues better than any truth serum. They took me for a stupid local girl who didn’t understand a word of German except “yes,” “no,” and “more.” What an advantage to be underestimated! I lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling and listening. I was listening to an artillery colonel complaining about the delay in shell deliveries to Kharkiv.
I listened to a young lieutenant crying on my shoulder, telling me about the order to burn a village to the ground at dawn. I memorized division numbers, village names, and the names of commanders. Every morning, on my way to the market, ostensibly to buy fresh herbs for the kitchen, I left notes in a hollow old oak tree in the park or gave them to a messenger, an old woman who sold sunflower seeds.
Two armored divisions were transferred south. An ammunition train was due to arrive on Thursday. My nights turned into a firestorm that rained down on them from the sky. Later I learned that the partisans derailed the train and our air force bombed the convoy. I didn’t see the explosions, but I knew I had done it.
I had ignited the spark, lying in the enemy’s silk underwear. But it was impossible to live in the monster’s lair without being bitten. The fear I thought I had buried returned in a new guise. It wasn’t the fear of death, but the fear of making a mistake. I was afraid of speaking Russian in my sleep and betraying myself.
I was afraid the vial of poison would be found during the searches. I was living on the edge of the abyss. One day, a new guest checked into the hotel, an SS stormtrooper named Klaus. His eyes were the color of a faded winter sky, and his smile was chilling. He was different from the others. He didn’t drink himself into oblivion, he didn’t talk much, he observed. He didn’t pick me right away.
For a week, he watched me in the restaurant, his gaze following me as I cleared tables. I felt his eyes on my back, like the scope of a sniper rifle. When he finally invited me to his room, I realized it was a test. I entered, clutching the precious vial in my apron pocket. My hands were freezing.
Klaus sat at the table cleaning his pistol. He didn’t even acknowledge me when I came in. “Take your clothes off,” he said quietly.
I began to unbutton my dress, trying to keep my fingers still. He stood up, came towards me, grabbed my chin sharply, and looked straight into my soul. “You’re too innocent to work in a kitchen,” he hissed. “Too smart to be a whore. Who are you?”
My heart stopped. A second of silence stretched endlessly. I knew one wrong word and I’d end up in the Gestapo cellars. I remembered Uncle Vasya’s advice: The best lie is the one that humiliates you. The enemy is more likely to believe in your wickedness than your heroism. I forced myself to cry.
I fell at his feet and sobbed: “I just want to live, Mr. Policeman. I just want something to eat. My father was an enemy of the people. The communists killed him. I hate them. Please don’t hit me.”
I said what he wanted to hear. I played the part of a pathetic, broken creature, ready to sell his homeland for a piece of sausage. His grip loosened. Disgusted, he kicked me away.
“Get up!” he snapped at him. “Pour me some wine and drink it yourself. You first.”
It was the moment of truth. I still had the last dose of thallium in the vial. If I poured it in now, I’d have to drink it myself. I looked at the bottle. I looked at his pistol on the table. There was no choice. With a deft movement, I discreetly poured the contents of the vial into the glass meant for him. But he switched the glasses. He laughed. He was toying with me.
“Drink,” he commanded.
I took the glass of poison. The liquid was red, like blood. I knew if I drank it all, I would die a painful death in a week. But if I didn’t, a bullet would kill me in a minute. I raised the glass to my lips. I took a sip, just a small sip. I tried not to swallow immediately, but he was looking at me. I had to swallow. My throat burned with cold.
“Now it’s my turn,” he said, and drank his own glass – pure, without poison.
That night he didn’t touch me. He just let me sit in the chair and watch him sleep. I sat there and listened to my body. I waited for the pain, I waited for the end. In the morning he threw me out. I ran to the toilet and put two fingers in my mouth to make myself vomit, even though many hours had passed.
I cried and smeared mascara down my cheeks. I thought it was over, but the poison had apparently dissolved in my blood in too small a dose. I was sick. I shivered for a week. Clumps of hair fell out, and my kidneys ached. The hotel manager wanted to fire me because he thought I was contagious. But I said it was just the flu. I survived. And Klaus went to the front two days later. I couldn’t kill him. It was my first defeat, and it taught me that there are no guarantees in this war. There is only chance.
But there were other girls too. Oh, how many of us there were! The hotel was full of people like me. They called us “German scum.” The locals spat at us. But they didn’t know everyone’s story. There was Tanja, a small, fragile blonde, only 17 years old. She wasn’t an agent; she’d simply broken down. She’d fallen in love with a young corporal named Hans.
He gave her chocolate and promised to take her back to Germany with him after the victory. She believed him. She beamed when she talked about him. The rest of us girls looked at her with pity and horror. She had betrayed the memory of her ancestors for a fairy tale, but the fairy tale ended quickly. When Hans’s regiment was transferred, he simply left her behind. He laughed and said there were a dozen like her in every town.
Tanya hanged herself in the hotel laundry room with a sheet on which a German man had slept only the day before. We found her in the morning. She was hanging between the white sheets like a broken doll. I looked at her blue face and felt a new wave of hatred welling up inside me—hatred not only for those who kill the body, but also for those who kill the soul. I cut the noose. I closed her eyes and swore that not one, but ten would pay for Tanya.
By the spring of 1943, the atmosphere in the city had changed. The Red Army was advancing. The Germans were becoming nervous and brutal. They felt the ground burning beneath their feet. Endless meetings began at the hotel. The generals arrived, unfolded maps, and shouted at each other. Security measures were tightened. It became more difficult to smuggle poison. We were searched at the entrance.
It took miraculous ingenuity. I soaked the threads of handkerchiefs in poison and submerged them in jugs of water. I hid the capsules in elaborate hairstyles under a layer of hairspray. I coated the rims of eyeglasses with poison. I became a master of murder. I didn’t just kill them with my hands; I killed them with information.
I learned of the arrival of a train carrying new Tiger tanks. I passed the news on. Two days later, the train station was so heavily bombed that the glow of the fire was visible 30 kilometers away. The officers in the hotel wandered around, covered in soot. They drank without clinking glasses, and I poured them drinks, smiling my lifeless smile.
“More vodka, Colonel?”
But the worst moment was yet to come. At the end of April, the contact called me. We met in a dilapidated library among burned books. Uncle Vasya looked ten years older. He was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette and his hands were trembling.
“Ljuda,” he said, without looking me in the eye. “You have done a great deal, more than any soldier. But now we need you to do the impossible.”
He unfolded a small piece of paper on the table. It was the hotel plan. “A week later, on May 1st, there will be a grand reception. A general will arrive—his name is unimportant. What is important is that the entire elite of Army Group South headquarters will be present. More than 100 high-ranking officers. They will celebrate, drink, and eat while our people die in concentration camps.”
He paused and stubbed out his cigarette on the sole of his boot. “We can’t bomb the hotel. There are too many civilians inside, too many of our people. We have to do it from the inside. They have to do it.”
He produced a heavy, dark glass bottle. “There’s enough in here to send an entire battalion to hell. This is a new concoction. It works faster, but still gives you the chance to retreat for an hour, maybe an hour and a half. Add this to the wine barrels used for the main toast. Not to the individual glasses, but to the barrels in the cellar.”
I looked at the bottle. It seemed like a black hole, capable of swallowing all light. It was suicide. Down into the cellar, open the barrels, pour in the poison, and remain undetected. And then I have to be in the room when they start to fall, or when they realize what’s happening.
“If you get caught…” Uncle Vasya began.
“I know,” I interrupted him. “I have a capsule for myself.”
He nodded and handed me a tiny vial of cyanide. “A collar,” he said, “in case it doesn’t work. It works instantly. You won’t feel any pain.”
I took the bottle containing the mass death and the capsule containing my own. I walked home through the ruins of Kyiv, and it seemed to me as if every stone was screaming. I realized that this was my final act, my last scene. I didn’t think I would live to see the morning of May 2nd. I remembered Andrei, my fiancé. Is he still alive? Will he ever know how I died? Or will he think I’ve become a doormat who ran off with the Germans? That thought was the most painful: to be a hero whom everyone considers a traitor. But there was no choice. I was a soldier without a uniform, and my battle was scheduled for May 1st.
Preparations for the reception were in full swing. The hotel was bustling with activity. They had brought delicacies from France, crates of champagne, and flowers. The Germans wanted to show that they would be here forever, that the war didn’t bother them. I worked 18-hour days, washing, cleaning, and decorating the hall with garlands. Every ribbon I hung felt like a noose.
I studied the security routes. The cellar was guarded by two watchmen. They rotated every four hours. But there was a window of opportunity: shift change at 3:00 p.m., when the corridor was empty for exactly two minutes. Two minutes to go down and unlock the door. I’d stolen the key a week earlier from a drunken sommelier and poured it into a bar of soap. Do it and come back. Two minutes that meant life or death.
I hadn’t slept the night before. I sat on my narrow bed in the staff quarters and rummaged through my only valuables: a photograph of my mother and a torn button from Andrej’s coat. I wrote a short note: “I didn’t betray him, I loved him, forgive me.” I sewed it into the lining of my only coat, hoping that one day, many years from now, someone would find it. Little did I know that fate had a very different ending in store for me—an ending more terrible than death and more terrible than life.
In the morning, I slipped into my best uniform, braided my hair, hid the bottle under my wide skirt, strapped it to my waist, and stepped into the hallway. The hotel was filled with the aroma of roast goose and expensive perfume, but to me, it smelled of blood. Time passed, the clock ticked. Tick-tock, tick-tock. Five more hours until I had to kill them all or die myself. I stood in the lobby, arranging crystal glasses. The sun shone through the enormous windows, playing with the rims. Beautiful. How beautiful the scene of a future murder can be.
Suddenly, the same manager approached me. “Ljudmila,” he said nervously. “The plans are changing. The general doesn’t want the wine poured from barrels. He wants special bottles from his personal collection opened right at the table. You will be one of those who open them.”
Everything inside me collapsed. My plan with the barrels in the cellar had failed. If the wine was opened in front of her, I couldn’t slip the poison in unnoticed. The bottle against my thigh burned my skin. I had to come up with something else immediately. Otherwise, a hundred murderers would go unpunished, and I would be left with nothing.
I looked at the long row of bottles on the sideboard. There were many, dozens. And a crazy, desperate thought came to me. If I can’t poison the source, I have to poison every single stream. But how? How could I do that in front of hundreds of people? In that moment, standing before the rows of bottles of expensive French wine, time seemed to stand still.
I perceived every sound in that damned hotel so acutely, as if my skin had been ripped off. The clinking of silverware, the drunken laughter, the heavy footsteps of the guards, even the buzzing of a fly hitting the window. I realized I had no plan. I only had the instinct of a hunted animal.
The manager was distracted and berating a young waitress about a stain on the tablecloth. He shouted at her and spat in her face—that was my salvation. Those 30 seconds of his rage would decide the fate of hundreds of German officers. I was standing behind the high bar, with my back to the dining area. My hands, which had been trembling with fear, suddenly became hard and icy cold.
I acted like a robot. I pulled the bottle from its secret compartment. With my teeth, I extracted the cork and tasted the bitter rubber on my lips. Before me stood 30 open bottles of Bordeaux, destined for the general’s table. I couldn’t measure the dose. I simply went down the row and poured the thick, oily liquid into each bottle. Two – three – four. The liquid mingled with the wine and vanished without a trace into its ruby-red depths.
A drop of poison fell onto the white, starched tablecloth and spread into a black, ominous stain. My breath caught in my throat. If someone saw it… I grabbed a napkin, covered the stain, and placed a heavy fruit bowl on top. My heart was pounding so hard I thought it would burst from my chest. I emptied everything, down to the last drop. Secretly, I shoved the empty bottle into a bucket of dirty soapy water.
“Ljudmila, did you fall asleep there? Bring the wine, the general is waiting!”
The manager’s voice sounded like a gunshot. My whole body trembled, but I immediately put on my usual mask of subservience. “Right away, sir,” I stammered, reaching for the heavy silver tray.
I carried death within me. Death in crystal. I entered the ballroom, and the light from the enormous chandeliers blinded me. The hall resembled a dragon’s lair. Hundreds of men in gray and black uniforms, adorned with iron crosses, sat at long tables laden with delicacies: roast goose, caviar, chocolate. They ate and laughed. Their faces glistened with grease and self-satisfaction.
I went to the main table. The general sat at the head. He looked like a bird of prey with a beak-like nose and cold, watery eyes. I began to pour wine. A dark red stream flowed into the glasses. I looked at the wine and saw in it the blood of those who had shot them. I saw in it my mother’s tears. I saw the faces of my neighbors hanging from the chestnut trees of Khreshchatyk. My hand didn’t tremble an inch.
I filled the general’s glass. He didn’t even acknowledge me. To him, I was nothing more than a piece of furniture. Nobody. Just a waiter. This arrogance was his downfall. When all the glasses were filled, the general rose slowly and with dignity. Immediately, silence fell over the hall. He raised his glass, and the light reflected in the poisoned liquid.
“For Greater Germany, for our Führer, for the approaching final victory!” he shouted. “Sieg Heil!”
Hundreds of throats roared in response. I leaned against the wall, clenched my hands into fists until my nails dug into my palms and I bled. I prayed. I, a Komsomol member who had never believed in God, prayed to all the saints: “Drink, you creatures, drink!” And they drank it all in one go.
I saw the poison seep into their stomachs, into their blood, bringing death to every cell. The deed was done. Now the countdown began. An hour, maybe an hour and a half. I had to disappear. Quietly, I placed the tray on the side table and began to back away toward the emergency exit.
“Hey, beautiful, where are you going?”
A drunken major grabbed my arm. His palm was sticky and hot. He reeked of onions and schnapps.
“To the kitchen, sir, for dessert. Sweets for heroes,” I stammered, trying not to look into his eyes, which would soon glaze over forever. He laughed maliciously, pulled me close, and tried to kiss me. I felt almost sick with disgust, but I forced a smile. “See you later, sir,” I whispered.
He let me go with a final slap. I went out into the corridor, and as soon as the door closed, I started running. I burst into the changing room, ripped off my hated apron with the German eagle, and threw on my old coat. I took nothing with me—no documents, no photos—only the capsule of cyanide sewn into the collar. I ran into the backyard, climbed over the fence, and cut my hands on the barbed wire. I ran through dark alleys, away from the Continental, away from the Wagner music that still played inside—a requiem for the murderers.
I ran until I tasted blood. I hid in the basement of a ruined school on the outskirts of town. It was dark, damp, and smelled of rats. I sat in a corner, hugged my knees, and waited. At first, the city was still asleep, but after two hours, the nightmare began. The wailing of sirens sliced through the night like a knife. Dozens of cars raced through the streets. I heard distant German commands, hysterical screams, and isolated gunshots.
The next morning, Kyiv was in a state of flurry. Rumors spread like wildfire. People spoke of partisans who had poisoned the drinking water, or of a chemical attack. But the truth was emerging: a terrible epidemic had broken out in the Continental Hotel. Forty-two high-ranking staff officers were dead. Another thirty were in critical condition. The general had died before daybreak in excruciating pain. It was said that he had torn his throat open with his fingernails when his lungs were paralyzed and he desperately gasped for air.
I heard this while standing in line for the surplus bread, a scarf pulled over my eyes, feeling a strange, echoing emptiness. No joy, just the feeling of having done hard, dirty work. But then the worst happened. The Germans went berserk. They were looking for me. My crudely drawn portrait hung on lampposts with the inscription: “Wanted Murderer.”
I couldn’t go outside. For three long months I lived in that cellar, in complete darkness, eating rusks, rats, and rotten potatoes brought to me by a messenger boy. I was rotting alive. My teeth were loosened by scurvy, my skin was covered in sores, but one thing I knew: I had a hundred fewer enemies.
And then, in November 1943, our troops arrived. I remember the roar of the artillery and the shouts of “Hurrah!” Emaciated, like a skeleton, I emerged from my prison. I wept with joy. I saw tanks with red stars. I ran to the soldiers and wanted to hug their dusty boots. I thought, “It’s over. I survived, I’m among my own kind.”
What a naive fool I was! The war doesn’t end with the silence of the guns. For people like me, the real war was only just beginning. Two days later, it wasn’t the Germans who came for me, but my own men in their cornflower-blue NKVD caps. I wasn’t received like a hero. They threw me onto the back of a truck along with traitors and guards. They took me to a damp cellar on Vladimirskaya Street—the same building that had once housed the Gestapo.
The investigator, a young lieutenant with a fish-like face, didn’t hit me immediately. He sat me down and leafed through my file. “So you worked in a German hotel?” he finally asked. “She served the German headquarters, slept with officers, received extra rations, and ate German chocolate while the Soviet population starved.”
I tried to explain. I shouted that I had been working in the underground and had poisoned them. “Ask Uncle Vasya, ask Pyotr Ilyich!” But the lieutenant just grinned. Uncle Vasya had been killed during the storming of the city. Pyotr Ilyich had been shot by the Germans months earlier. There were no witnesses.
“There are no witnesses, Ms. Volkova. But there are many witnesses to your debauchery. The neighbors say you wore silk and laughed with the Germans. You are German scum, a traitor to the fatherland.”
It was a blow that broke me more than all the years of occupation. My head was shaved bald. It wasn’t the Gestapo who beat me, but my own people—Russians, the same age as those I had saved. They kicked me with their boots and spat in my face. I lay on the cold concrete and thought, “If only I had taken that cyanide capsule back then.”
I was saved by a miracle. In the half-burned archives of the Gestapo, a file was found. It contained the report on the investigation into the poisoning at the Continental Hotel. My name was there, my photo with a red note: “Especially dangerous terrorist, agent of the Bolsheviks. Find and destroy.”
This German document, signed by the murderer, saved me. After six months, I was released without apology. They simply threw me out of prison with a release certificate, stating that “there was no evidence of a crime.”
But the stigma remained. An invisible mark on my file blocked my path to becoming a teacher. My entire life I worked as a nurse, cleaner, and seamstress. I married a good man, a veteran without a leg, but I never told him the whole truth. I was afraid he would look at me with disgust.
For forty years I lived with this lie. Nightmares tormented me. I didn’t dream of corpses, but of the living. I dreamed of Hans giving Tanja chocolate. I dreamed of the colonel who was the first. In the dream, they were people. They smiled, and I killed them again and again.
The poison I took back then to deceive Klaus also left its mark. I couldn’t have children. The doctors said the heavy metal poisoning had irreversible consequences. That was the price. My family line died with me. But perhaps it’s better this way. It’s hard for the children of a murderer, even if he was in the right, to live in this world.
I am 73 years old now. The country for which I killed and died is crumbling before my eyes. Everything we believed in has proven to be a lie. Yet my war was real. I look at my old hands. These hands filled jars with death, but these same hands comforted the dying in hospitals and mopped floors. I don’t know if there is a God, but if I meet those German boys in the afterlife, I will not lower my gaze. I will tell them: “You came to me with a sword. You killed my mother. I met you with poison. We are even.”
For almost half a century, I remained silent out of fear. But now I am old and have nothing left to lose. Soon I will be gone, and my story will accompany me to the grave. But I want you to know: Victory was not won by tanks alone, but also by the humiliation and shame we women had to endure. We wore no medals; our orders were scars on the soul that will never heal.
Sometimes I see young girls in the park. They’re laughing and kissing boys. They have no idea that beneath their feet lie the ashes of millions of others, just like them. And thank God they don’t. May they never know the taste of thallium. I’ve told you everything. I’ve ripped this rotten, shredded piece from my heart. Now it’s yours. Condemn me, pity me, or forget me. I don’t care. I’ve done my duty. I survived, and I took my revenge.
On May 9, 1945, I bought a bottle of the most expensive wine I could find on the black market. I returned to my empty room, poured myself a full glass, and placed photos of my mother and Andrei in front of me. I drank this wine alone while fireworks rumbled outside. The wine was bitter as wormwood, but I was alive, and that was my greatest triumph, my personal victory over them.
Memory is our only weapon against time. Don’t let it fade. Courage doesn’t always wear a uniform. Sometimes it wears lipstick and the burden of eternal silence. To preserve these stories is to resist oblivion.
