‘The Captain’s Toy’ — This Soviet Prisoner Thought a German Officer Had Saved Her Life, But…

My name is Katerina Pavlovna Sokolova. I am now 82 years old and I live in a small apartment on the outskirts of Moscow. For 58 years I kept silent about what happened to me in Germany. I didn’t tell my children, I didn’t tell my grandchildren. I even spoke to my husband only in fragments when he found me at night in the corner of the room, shivering and wet with cold sweat.

He hugged me and didn’t ask any questions. He understood that the war had broken something in me that words could not fix. But now I’m 82. I’ll be gone soon, and if I don’t tell it now, this story will die with me. And I can’t let his name disappear without a trace. I cannot allow Captain Weber to remain in the memory of people as just an administrator, as he said in court.

He was a monster. He turned me into his toy. And when the toy broke, he threw me out to be eaten by dogs. But I survived. I shouldn’t have survived, but I did. And now I will tell you everything. Before the war I lived in Kyiv. It was 1941. I was 19 and studying to be a nurse at university.

I dreamed of working in a children’s hospital. I had long, light brown hair that I wore in a braid, and grey eyes that my mother called the colour of rain over the Dnieper. I lived with my parents and my younger brother Misha in a two-room apartment not far from the center.

My father worked as an engineer at a factory, and my mother taught literature at school. On Sundays we went to the park, and Misha rode on the swings, and I read Tolstoy on a bench under the linden trees. I remember the smell of linden blossom in June. I remember the sun shining through the leaves and creating spots of light on the pages of the book.

I remember feeling protected, loved, alive. I didn’t know that in a few weeks all this would turn to ashes. On June 22, 1941, the war began. The Germans arrived so quickly that we did not have time to evacuate. My father went to the front in the first days. We never saw him again. Mom, Misha and I remained in occupied Kyiv.

It was scary at first , but bearable. We hid at home, saved food, avoided patrols. But in September 1941 mass executions began. The Jews were driven into Baba Yar and killed. We heard gunshots at night. We heard screams echoing throughout the city. I covered my ears with my palms and cried into the pillow.

And Misha, who was only 14 years old, sat next to me and stroked my head, trying to comfort me. In October 1942, the Germans began to take young people to work in Germany. They broke into houses, checked documents, and grabbed anyone who looked healthy and able to work. The neighbors warned us, and my mother hid me in the basement, covering me with old rags and sacks of potatoes.

I lay there for 2 hours, choking from dust and fear, while German boots trampled over my head. They searched the entire apartment, broke dishes, tore books, but did not find me. That time I was saved. But in December 1942 I was out of luck. I went outside to buy bread. Mom asked me not to go, but we hadn’t had food for 3 days, and Misha was too weak to walk on his own.

I threw on an old scarf, hid my hair, put on a shabby coat and went to the market. At the corner of Khreshchatyk Street I was stopped by a German patrol, two soldiers in grey coats and an officer in a black SS uniform. The officer was young, with a narrow face and cold blue eyes. He looked at me as if I were a thing and not a person.

He asked in German if I had documents. I held out my passport with a trembling hand. He looked at the birthday, at my face, then back at the date. He smiled. It was the smile of a predator. He said something to the soldiers, and they grabbed my arms. I screamed. I tried to break free, but one of them hit me on the back with the butt of his rifle, and I fell onto the cold pavement.

I was thrown into a truck with other girls and boys. There were about 30 of us, maybe more. We drove for several hours. Then they unloaded us at the train stations and herded us into freight cars like cattle. The doors were locked from the outside. The carriage was dark, cold and cramped.

There were more than 80 of us in one carriage designed for 40. We stood shoulder to shoulder, we couldn’t sit down, we couldn’t lie down. There was one bucket for toilet needs in the corner, but it was almost impossible to reach. The air was heavy, thick with the smell of sweat, urine and fear. The train started moving.

He traveled for 3 days and 3 nights. They didn’t give us water, they did n’t give us food. Once a day the doors were opened slightly, and a loaf of bread and a bucket of muddy water were thrown inside . People fought for every crumb. Old people fell down and died right there.

Their bodies remained standing because there was no room to fall. I pressed myself against the wall of the carriage and tried not to breathe too deeply. There was a girl standing next to me, her name was Olga. She was from Kharkov, she was 18, and she cried for all 3 days. She called her mother in a quiet, broken voice.

I held her hand. It was the only thing I could do. I held her hand and whispered that everything would be fine, although I didn’t believe these words myself. On the third night the train stopped. The doors opened, and the bright light of the spotlights hit us in the eyes. We were blinded by the light after those days of darkness.

They drove us out of the carriage with blows and shouts. The German Shepherds were barking and straining at their leashes. Men in striped clothes grabbed our things and threw them into a pile. I saw a huge gate with an inscription that I couldn’t read because it was in German.

I saw tall towers with machine guns. I saw barbed wire stretching in all directions, as far as the eye could see. I saw smoke, black and thick, rising from a long pipe in the distance. I didn’t understand what it was. Later I found out that it was a crematorium. We were lined up in rows.

An SS officer wearing white gloves walked along the line and pointed his finger to the right or left. To the right walked the old people and children, to the left walked the young and strong. I didn’t know what it meant then. I didn’t know that those who went to the right were sent to the gas chambers that same day.

They sent me to the left, and Olga too. They drove us into a large wooden building where they forced us to strip naked. We stood on the cold concrete floor, hundreds of naked women shivering with cold and shame. German soldiers walked among us and laughed, pointed their fingers, made obscene gestures.

Then women in striped clothes came with scissors. They shaved our heads. I saw my long blond hair falling on the floor. I felt the cold on my bare scalp. I felt like I was being stripped not only of my clothes, but also of my humanity. They forced us into a cold shower. The water was icy.

Then they gave us striped dresses, too big or too small, and wooden shoes. which rubbed their feet until they bled. We were given numbers. My number was 8.234. It was tattooed on my left forearm with a needle and ink. It hurt, but I didn’t cry. I couldn’t cry. Something closed inside me. Some part of the soul hid deep, so as not to break completely.

We were sent to barrack number 23. It was a long wooden building with three-story bunks. Six people slept on each tier. On wooden boards, no mattresses, no pillows, just a thin blanket for everyone. I was lying between Olga and a woman about forty years old, whose name was Raisa. Raisa was from Minsk.

She had been here for a year already and knew all the rules. She whispered to us at night how to survive. “Don’t look the guards in the eyes. Don’t eat too quickly, otherwise your stomach won’t be able to handle it. Don’t trust anyone but your own . Don’t show weakness. If you show weakness, you will be killed.” I listened to her voice in the dark and tried to remember every word.

In the morning at 4:00 a.m. we were woken up by a whistle. We got up, made the bunks, and went out for roll call. We stood on the parade ground in any weather: in the rain, in the snow, in the scorching sun, while the German guards counted us. Sometimes the roll call lasted 2 hours. If someone fell, they would kick him until he got up or died.

After roll call we were given breakfast, a mug of a cloudy liquid called coffee, and a piece of black bread. The bread was hard, like stone, and smelled of mold, but we ate it slowly, biting off small pieces to deceive our hunger. Then they sent us to work. I was sent to the quarry. It was a huge hole dug in the ground where we quarried granite.

We were going down a narrow staircase, which was called the staircase of death, because every day someone fell and died. Down below they gave us picks and shovels. We had to break rock, lift heavy blocks and carry them up. The blocks weighed 30 kg each. My hands were bleeding, my shoulders were burning with pain, my legs were shaking under the weight of the stone.

Kopa, a German thug with a club, walked among us and shouted: “If someone stopped, he hit them. If someone worked too slowly, he hit them. If someone just looked at him the wrong way, he hit them.” I saw women fall under the blows. I saw their skulls split, their blood mixed with the dirt. I saw how their bodies were left there until the end of the working day, and in the evening other prisoners carried them to the crematorium.

I worked until I dropped from exhaustion. I worked until my hands stopped obeying me. I worked because the only alternative was death. October 1943. I’ve been at camp for almost a year now. My body turned into a skeleton covered with skin. The ribs protruded so much that they could be counted. My hair grew back, but it was thin and brittle, the color of ash.

My eyes were sunken deep into my skull. I didn’t recognize myself when I saw my reflection in a puddle of water. Olga died in March. She just didn’t wake up one morning. Her heart stopped in her sleep from exhaustion. Raisa died in June. She was beaten to death for stealing a potato peeling from the kitchen. I was left alone.

I didn’t talk to anyone else. I turned into a shadow, into a mechanism that simply followed orders and tried to survive until the next day. I didn’t think about the future. I had no future. All I could think about was getting through the next hour, the next roll call, the next descent into the quarry.

That morning I was at the bottom of the quarry. I tried to lift a block of granite, but my hands wouldn’t obey me anymore. I fell to my knees in the mud. The block slipped out of my hands and fell next to me, almost crushing my leg. I knew that Kapo would come now and kill me. I was ready. I even felt relieved. Finally it will all end. But Capa didn’t come.

Instead, a whisper passed over the heads of the prisoners , and then everything became silent. Even Capa fell silent and stood at attention peacefully. I looked up and saw an SS officer walking along the edge of the quarry. He was tall, in an immaculate black uniform. His boots glistened in the sun.

He had a beautiful face, cold and correct, like a statue. His eyes were the color of steel. It was Captain Weber. I’ve heard his name before. They whispered about him in the barracks. They said that he was worse than all the others, that he enjoyed the suffering of prisoners, that he staged cruel games.

They said that he selects beautiful prisoners and takes them to his villa, and no one ever sees them again. Weber stopped at the edge of the quarry and looked us over. His gaze slid over the grey mass of emaciated bodies, over hunched backs, over dirty faces, and then his gaze stopped on me. I was still kneeling in the mud. holding on to a granite block.

My hair was disheveled, my face was covered in dust and blood, but for some reason he singled me out. He looked at me for a long, long time, studying every feature of my face under the layer of dirt. He looked at the color of my eyes, the shape of my lips, the curve of my neck. I looked down, as Raisa taught me, but it was too late. He has already chosen me.

Weber gestured with his black leather- gloved hand. Capa ran up to him, bending over in a subservient bow. Weber said something to him in German, pointing at me. Capa nodded and ran down into the quarry. He came up to me, grabbed my hand and lifted me to my feet. I thought he was going to hit me, but instead he led me to the stairs.

The other prisoners looked at me with horror and pity. They knew what it meant. They took me upstairs to the officer. My heart was beating so hard I thought it would burst. Weber stood at the top, his arms crossed over his chest. When Kapo brought me to him, he looked at me again. This time, from close range, he lifted my chin with the tip of his leather glove and turned my face left, then right, studying my profile.

He ran his finger down my cheek, wiping away dirt to reveal the skin underneath. His touch was cold, distant, like the touch of a man who is assessing an item before buying it. He said something to Capa in German. Capa shouted orders to the other guards. They grabbed me by the arms and led me away from the quarry. I looked back and saw the other prisoners continuing to work.

Their figures are becoming smaller and smaller . I did n’t understand what was happening. I thought they were taking me to be shot, but instead they took me to a building where there were showers for the guards. Not the showers they forced us into on the first day, cold and cruel, but real showers with hot water and white tiles.

The security guard, a plump German woman with a stern face, told me to undress. I pulled off my dirty striped dress and wooden shoes. I stood naked on the cold tiled floor, shivering from cold and fear. She turned on the water. Hot water. I haven’t felt hot water for almost a year.

The water hit my skin and it hurt so much that I screamed. My wounded arms and back burned under the streams of water, but at the same time it was bliss. The dirt washed off my body, flowing in black streams into the drain. The woman gave me a bar of soap, real soap that smelled of lavender.

I rubbed it on my skin until it bled, trying to wash away not only the dirt, but also the memory of this place. After the shower she gave me a towel, clean and white, and clothes. Not striped uniforms, but real clothes. A long grey skirt and a white blouse, too big for my emaciated body, but clean and soft. She even gave me shoes.

Not wooden lasts, but real leather shoes. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I thought it was a dream, that now I would wake up on a wooden bunk in a barracks. But it was not a dream. At 7:00 in the evening I was taken to Willie’s officers. It was a big beautiful house on a hill with a garden and a high fence.

Warm light poured from the windows. I could hear music, classical music. coming from within. Below, behind the fence , there was a camp, grey barracks, barbed wire, smoke and a crematorium. And here, on the hill there was a different reality. The reality of warmth, light and music.

The guard knocked on the door and handed me over to the orderly, a young soldier with a narrow face. The orderly led me inside. I walked down a corridor with wood panelling on the walls and paintings in gilded frames. There was a soft carpet underfoot. It smelled of something delicious, food, real food, fried meat and bread.

My stomach clenched with hunger so hard that I bent over. The orderly opened the door to the office and gestured for me to enter. The room was warm. The fire crackled in the fireplace . The walls were lined with bookshelves with leather bindings. On the table there was a record player from which Mozart’s music was pouring.

Weber sat in a leather chair with a glass of cognac in his hand. He took off his cap. His blond hair was neatly combed back. He looked almost human. He smiled when he saw me.

“Come closer,” he said in Russian, with a slight German accent. “Don’t be afraid, here you are no longer number 8234. Here you are my guest,” he pointed to a small table where a plate stood. On the plate there was white bread, a piece of cheese and an apple. A real red apple. I haven’t seen an apple for over a year. ” Eat,” Weber ordered. “You are too thin. I don’t like broken toys.” I rushed towards the food.

I ate like an animal, greedily, without chewing, shoving pieces of bread into my mouth so quickly that I almost choked. I didn’t see Weber’s gaze. I didn’t see the predatory fire in his eyes that flared up as he watched me eat. I didn’t realize that this food wasn’t a gift, it was an investment.

Weber put food, water, and clean clothes in me, not out of mercy, but because he wanted his toy to look beautiful when he started playing with it. I thought I had found a savior. I thought I was out of hell. I didn’t know I had just entered a torture chamber, more sophisticated than anything imaginable.

A chamber where it is not the body that will be destroyed first, but the soul. Weber let me finish eating. Then he told me to sit on the floor at his feet, like a dog. I sat down on the soft Persian carpet and pressed my back against the chair. He put his hand on my head and began to slowly stroke my short hair.

His fingers slid down my neck, down the back of my head. It was the touch of a master checking the quality of his property.

“You will live here,”, he said quietly. “You will eat my food, wear my clothes, sleep under my roof. You will belong to me. If you are obedient, I will be good to you. If you resist, I will take you back down to the quarry, and you will die there in a week. Or I will give you to my dogs. They are very hungry. Do you understand me?”

I nodded, unable to utter a word. “Okay,” said Weber. “Very good. Now you are my doll.”

During the first days, I lived in a small room next to Weber’s bedroom. The room had a mattress on the floor, a clean blanket, and a small window overlooking the valley. From the window, I could see the camp below. I could see the crematorium chimney, from which black smoke rose day and night. I could see columns of prisoners marching to and from work. I could hear gunshots, dogs barking, screams.

The smell of burnt flesh penetrated even through the closed windows of the villa. I lay on a clean mattress, covered with a warm blanket, and ate the remains of fried chicken, while my comrades were dying of hunger 100 meters away from me. The feeling of guilt ate away from the inside , more than hunger ever ate away.

Why me? Why am I here in the warmth, and they are there in the cold? I didn’t deserve this. I didn’t do anything special. I just happened to be beautiful enough for the captain’s perverted whim. I was alive because he liked the color of my eyes. It wasn’t fair, it was unbearable. But the instinct for survival is stronger than guilt.

Every morning, when they brought me food, I ate. Every time Weber called me, I came. I sold my soul for a piece of bread. Weber came home every evening around 8. As soon as I heard the sound of his footsteps in the hallway, my heart started pounding. It was a strange cocktail of fear and anticipation, because Weber was the only person who decided whether I would live or die.

He would enter the office, take off his cap and gloves, pour himself a cognac. Then he would snap his fingers. That was my signal. I would enter the office and sit on the floor at his feet. He would stroke my head like a pet. Sometimes he would talk to me. He would tell me about his day, about stupid orders from Berlin, about incompetent subordinates.

He would talk as if I were his friend, his companion. But I was not his friend, I was his thing. Sometimes he would be silent and would just stroke me, looking into the fire. His fingers would slide down my neck, down my shoulders, down my back. It was a touch, cold and calculating. He studied me like an artist studies his model before he begins to create.

I sat motionless, barely breathing, because I knew that any movement, any sign of fear or disgust could anger him. One evening, it was in November, Weber brought a sketchbook and charcoal pencils.

“You are an educated girl, aren’t you?” he said, leafing through my camp file, which lay on his desk. “Did you go to university? Can you draw?”

I nodded. They taught me to draw at school . I was not an artist, but I knew how to hold a pencil and create the semblance of a portrait.

“Draw me,” Weber ordered, leaning back in his chair. I took the pencil with trembling hands. I began to draw his profile.

I tried my best because I knew that my life depends on the quality of this drawing. I drew the straight line of his nose, the square jaw, the cold eyes. I created a portrait heroic, noble, erasing the cruelty and leaving only the Aryan beauty which he cherished so much. When I finished, Weber took the album.

He looked at the drawing for a long time, then smiled. “Beautiful, my doll,” he said. “You have talent.” He leaned over and kissed my forehead. Dry, fatherly. A terrifying kiss. “See, I knew you were too precious for the quarry. You were made for art. You belong to me.”

The word echoed in my head. Belong. I was no longer human. I was Captain Weber’s property. But the golden cage had invisible, sharp bars. At night, while Weber slept in the next room, I lay awake on my mattress. The small window looked out onto the valley. From there, I could see the crematorium chimney. I saw black smoke rising into the starry sky.

I could smell burning flesh, penetrating even through the villa’s double glazing. Guilt gnawed at me like acid. Why am I eating chicken while my comrades are dying? Sometimes at night, I heard distant screams during roll call. I imagined my friends shivering in the cold while I lay here, warm at the monster’s feet.

This guilt was a torture more exquisite than hunger. It told me that I was a traitor, that I had sold my soul for a piece of bread, and Weber knew how to play that string. Sometimes He opened the window on purpose.

“Do you hear?” he said, sipping wine. “They’re dying, Katerina. They all die, but not you, because I chose you. You should thank me.”

And I, broken by shame and horror, whispered: “Thank you, Herr Captain.”

It was the perfect trap. Weber didn’t just control my body, he colonized my mind. He positioned himself as the only merciful god in the universe of demons. But after 2 weeks the atmosphere changed. I gained weight.

My dark circles under my eyes disappeared. I became beautiful again, and Weber became bored. Salvation was over. The restoration of the work of art was complete. It was time to play. One evening, at the end of November, Weber returned earlier than usual. He smelled of strong alcohol. His steps were heavy. He did not smile when he came in.

He did not ask for a drawing. He looked at me sitting quietly on the carpet with a German book that I barely understood. Weber came over. He tore the book out of my arms and threw her across the room. He grabbed my hair, pulling my head back hard, exposing my neck.

“You’ve had enough, doll,” Weber growled. His voice was twisted with desire and violence. “You’re beautiful now. You are ready.”

He pulled me to my feet. “Tonight we are not painting. Tonight you will show me your true gratitude.”

He began to unbutton his jacket. I understood. The illusion of security shattered into pieces. I was not a guest. I was not a guarded artist. I was prey, fattened up to make the hunt more fun. That night in Captain Weber’s bedroom there was the smell of leather, expensive cologne, and suddenly fear, animal, acrid fear, emanating from my pores.

Weber had changed. His usually cold, handsome face was distorted by a grimace of cruel desire. He pushed me toward the large canopy bed. I stumbled and fell onto the red satin bedspread. The softness of the fabric under my wounded hands seemed like a mockery.

“Undress,” Weber ordered in a low voice. “Show me that you deserve what I’m giving you.”

I hesitated for a second, just one second. It was the instinct for self-preservation warring with dignity. If I refuse, I will die. If I agree, I will die too. But differently from the inside. My trembling fingers unbuttoned the buttons of my white blouse one by one. Slowly. Weber watched, motionless. A glass of cognac in his hand. He enjoyed the humiliation. He loved to see the shame coloring my cheeks.

For him, this was not just sex, it was theater, an assertion of power. When I was naked, trembling despite the warmth of the fireplace, Weber approached. He did not touch me right away. He walked around the bed like a predator surrounding its prey.

“You are beautiful, doll,” he whispered. “But you’re too tense. A doll must be pliable.” A doll must smile. He grabbed my jaw with an iron fist. “Smile.”

I tried. I stretched my lips into a trembling grimace. It was the smile of a condemned man before a firing squad.

“Better,” Weber said.

What followed was not love. It was not even passion. It was a methodical invasion. Weber used my body as an object. He twisted, manipulated, demanded poses, looks, sounds. He wanted me to play a role. He called me women’s names. He whispered obscenities in my ear , mixing perverted words of endearment and death threats.

“You are mine. You exist only because I want you to. If I snap my fingers, you will return to the dirt.”

I closed my eyes. I I used the only defense I had left – dissociation. I left the room. I left my body on that red bed in the officer’s arms, and my mind flew out the window. I returned to Kyiv, to our small apartment.

I imagined the smell of borscht that my mother cooked on Sundays. I imagined the light falling through the window onto my book. I focused on the memory of the blue sky over the Dnieper. I no longer felt pain. I no longer felt Weber’s weight on me. I painted in my imagination, mixing the blue of the sky with the white of the clouds. I painted so as not to scream.

The act lasted an eternity. When Weber finished, he pushed me away like an empty plate. He stood up, adjusted his uniform with icy indifference, poured another glass of cognac. I remained curled up on the bed, pulling satin sheet to cover my nail. I felt dirty, indelible dirt, much worse than the dirt of the camp.

Dirt washes away with water. It was ingrained in my soul. Weber turned to the window overlooking the backyard.

“Come here,” he said calmly.

On trembling legs, I wrapped the sheet around myself and went to the window. Outside, in the fenced-in enclosure, just below the balcony, moved two massive shadows, two black Dobermans, muscular, their eyes glowing in the night. They didn’t bark, they waited, staring at the illuminated window with terrifying concentration.

“It’s Era and Zeus,” Weber imagined, stroking the glass. ” They are very hungry tonight. I didn’t give them any meat.” He turned his steely gaze on me. “They like fresh meat, tender like you.”

The message was clear, cruel. The bedroom was an alternative to the kennel. Either I would be an obedient toy, or I would become dinner for the dogs. There was no third option . No return to camp, no mercy. Weber smiled a smile showing only his teeth.

“You were obedient today, Katerina. You have earned the right to sleep here, on the carpet by my bed.”

I lay down on the Persian rug at the foot of his bed. I could hear Weber’s even breathing as he fell asleep a few meters above, and outside I could hear the scraping of the dogs’ claws on the concrete. I counted the seconds until dawn. My life was a reprieve. I was in the belly of the beast, and the beast always digests what it swallows.

That night I didn’t sleep. I looked at the carved ceiling, the gilded stucco. I realized I hated this luxury more than anything. I would rather be in a cold barracks, huddled next to my comrades, starving but still dignified, than be this warm, well-fed thing serving as a garbage dump for a monster.

But the instinct for life is a curse. In the morning, when Weber woke up and asked for coffee, I got up, brought the coffee, lowered my head, smiled, played the role, because I wanted to live another day, just one day. But Weber quickly got bored. Toys, even the most beautiful ones, wear out.

And the captain already had a new idea to liven up the entertainment. An idea involving a holiday, guests, and a public display of one’s property. December 24, 1943 year, Christmas Eve. In the camp below, the prisoners were dying of cold in the minus 15 degrees, huddling close to each other to catch the last shred of human warmth.

But in Captain Weber’s villa, a fire crackled cheerfully in the large marble fireplace. Weber was hosting Christmas dinner for his fellow officers. There were six of them around the massive oak table, six men in black uniforms, their collars unbuttoned, faces red from strong alcohol, crystal glasses in their hands.

The air was thick with cigar smoke and the smell of roasting game. I waited in the next room. Weber had prepared a special outfit for his toy that evening, or rather, lack of an outfit. I wore nothing but a leather dog collar around my neck and polished black shoes. Nothing else. My nail among these men, Dressed in wool and leather, there was absolute vulnerability.

I felt like a skinned animal. The bell rang. It was the signal. I entered the dining room, carrying a heavy silver tray with Burgundy wine stolen in France. Conversation stopped abruptly, then the laughter resumed, louder, rougher.

“Well, Weber,” exclaimed Abershturm Führer, his face pitted by a mop. “You didn’t deceive us. You found the real Venus in the mud.

“This is my little artist,” Weber answered with the pride of ownership, without even looking at me. “She has a crazy talent, and she serves wine like a Parisian waitress, isn’t she a doll.”

I went up to the table. My hands were shaking so much that the bottles clinked on the tray. This little crystal sound betrayed my terror. I began to pour for the first guest. I had to lean forward, and I felt the gaze of six men sliding over my body, weighing flesh, assessing forms. I felt defiled by their eyes more reliably than by their hands.

But the hands were not long in coming . When I poured for the third officer, a massive man with thick fingers, he reached out and pinched my thigh hard.

“The meat is tender,” the officer chuckled. “Tell me, Weber, will you lend it to me after dessert?”

I winced in pain and surprise. It was an uncontrollable reflex. The silver tray rocked. A bottle of grand cru, a dark, thick red wine, fell. It didn’t break on the floor. It hit the edge of the table and spilled all over the immaculate trousers of the officer who had just pinched me, spattering the immaculate white tablecloth. Time stood still. The red stain spread across the white fabric, like a bullet wound widening.

It ran down the black uniform. An unforgivable desecration. The silence that fell in the room was more terrible than all the screams in the camp. The spattered officer stood up abruptly, knocking over his chair.

“Little [ __ ]!” he screamed, hitting me with all his might.

I fell backwards, my nose bleeding, curled up on the carpet, waiting to die. But it wasn’t the guest’s anger I feared most, it was Weber’s. The captain stood up slowly. His face wasn’t red with anger. It was white. White with shame. His toy had humiliated him before his equals. His perfect doll had broken. His authority had been spattered by that spilled wine. Weber came up to me. He didn’t shout.

His voice was an icy whisper, cutting like a razor. “You’re clumsy, Katerina. I hate clumsy things. You’ve ruined the holiday.”

I looked up. My face was covered in tears and blood. “Forgive me, forgive me, master, I didn’t mean to,” I whispered. I used the word master, hoping to awaken Weber’s warped protective nature. But the charm was broken, the illusion was dispelled. Weber never saw the beautiful, tame artist again. He saw a dirty, naked, whining prisoner who had just ruined his Christmas dinner.

Weber looked at his guests. He had to save face. to prove that he is not attached to this thing, that he is a real ss, hard and ruthless.

“This toy is broken,” Weber said dryly. “And when a toy is broken, it is thrown away.” He turned to the window overlooking the courtyard. “Hans!” – he shouted to his orderly, who was waiting in the corridor. “Open the door to the terrace.”

The icy December air blew into the overheated dining room, causing the candle flames to flicker. Outside it was snowing, falling quietly. And in the courtyard of Era and Zeus, two Dobermans rose to their feet. They smelled the blood coming out of my nose. They smelled fear. Weber looked at me for the last time. There was no longer desire in his eyes , only disgust.

“You wanted to be a pet, then go play with your fellow pets.”

He pointed to the snow-covered garden. Run. I understood. There will be no firing squad, no gas chamber. My end will be a living spectacle for these monsters’ dessert. I stood up naked, shaking from cold and horror, and looked at the black night through the open door. It was freedom, death, or both.

“Run!” – Weber yelled, throwing an empty bottle at me .

I rushed into the snow. My bare feet burned on the frozen ground. I ran towards the trees, towards the shadows, feeling nothing but the instinct for survival. Behind me I heard a short whistle, then the sound of claws on concrete and the low growl of two-sixty-kilogram beasts being released at full speed.

My run lasted 40 seconds. This is the time it takes a naked, exhausted, frightened woman to run 100 meters through deep snow. And the time it takes two trained Dobermans. To catch up with the victim. I didn’t hear the dogs approaching. The blood pounded too loudly in my temples.

I just felt the blow. Zeus, a sixty-kilogram male, slammed into my back, sending me face-first into the icy snow. The air was knocked out of my lungs. Before I could turn over, the fangs closed on my body. It was not a clean death. Weber’s dogs were trained not to kill instantly, but to tear. From the dining room window, six officers watched the performance, raising their glasses.

Captain Weber stood a little to the side, his face impassive, watching as his work of art was taken apart into pieces. He felt no pity, only a slight irritation at the loss of entertainment that might have lasted for several more weeks. I screamed a cry that pierced the Christmas night. The scream was so pure and heart-rending that it stopped the conversations in the Villa for a moment.

Then the era grabbed my neck. The scream turned into a wet gurgle. The snow-white garden turned scarlet. The red spot was spreading. A creepy mirror of a wine stain on a white tablecloth. A few minutes earlier, Weber had drawn the heavy velvet curtains.

“The show is over, gentlemen,” he said. Calmly. “Let’s move on to dessert.”

My body was left there all night. By morning, I was an unrecognizable mess. Guards threw the remains into the crematorium along with the others who died that night. Katerina, a student nurse, a girl with grey eyes the colour of rain over the Dnieper, turned into smoke and disappeared.

At least that’s what Weber thought. But I didn’t die that night. At the last moment, when the dogs were centimeters away from me, one of the guards, a young soldier named Friedrich, whom I had never seen before, fired into the air. The dogs were distracted for a second. Friedrich hit them with the butt of his rifle, driving them away, then threw his overcoat over my bloody body and dragged me into the shade.

He hid me in the tool shed and silently bandaged my wounds. He didn’t explain why he saved me. Maybe he was tired of killing, maybe he saw me as his sister. I don’t know and I will never know, because two weeks later he was killed on the Eastern Front. In April 1945, the war ended for Flosenburg.

American Katerina Pavlovna Sokolova died in Moscow in 2004 at the age of 82 years. She lived a long life, but every night she returned to that snowy garden. More than 2 million Soviet citizens were deported to Nazi forced labor camps during World War II. Many of them were women and girls.

Her voice did not cease, her drawings survived. Her testimony remains proof that even in the deepest darkness, the human spirit seeks a way to leave a mark. If you watched to the end, please write in the comments what city or country you are watching from, and subscribe so you don’t miss out.