Find Me in Russia: Diary of an 'Eastern Slave' in German Captivity, 1944–1945

In 2005, an autobiographical book by Vera Pavlovna Frolova, «Ищи меня в России» (Find Me in Russia), was published. Printed in a small run—just 500 copies—it quickly became a bibliographic rarity: in a substantial volume, readers were given the diaries that Vera, still very young, kept in German captivity in 1942–1945.

«I was 17 when the German-Fascist troops occupied Strelná, the suburb of Leningrad where I was born and went to school. And in the spring of 1942 the Nazis drove me, together with my mother, to Germany, where we became “Ostarbeiters,” that is to say “eastern slaves”…»—this is how Vera Pavlovna wrote in the preface to the first edition. After this restrained, almost dry retelling of her personal fate comes a document of exceptional power—testimony from an eyewitness and participant in one of the most terrible tragedies of the 20th century.

«After our liberation by Soviet troops in March 1945, we returned to our Homeland. At that time, my only “trophy” from Germany was a battered straw “suitcase” with a packet of diary notes…» These texts, sometimes written on scraps of paper packaging from German fertilizers, Vera Pavlovna kept all her life and herself prepared for publication.

The chronicle of four years lived in captivity was divided into four parts of the book «Ищи меня в России» (Find Me in Russia). This volume includes the third and fourth parts of Vera Pavlovna Frolova’s diary—entries about the events of 1944 and 1945.