Раїса Погорелова
Letters and diary of a young Ukrainian woman taken from Kyiv to Nazi Germany as forced labor. 180 pages preserved by her family. Now transcribed for the first time.
The Story
On April 14, 1942, eighteen-year-old Raisa Pogorelova boarded a train in Kyiv. She didn't know where she was going. Eight days later, after passing through Kraków and spending 21 nights in a horse stable in Ansbach, she was assigned to a farm in the Franconian countryside — Schönaich, 46 kilometers south of Würzburg.
She brought with her a 10-kopeck Ukrainian school notebook. On its cover she wrote: «Дневник Deutschland» — Diary Germany. She filled it to the last page, writing even around the multiplication table on the back cover.
For the next two years, she wrote letters home to her sister Anna, her grandmother, and the children — Grishunok and Motik. She described farm life at 4:55 AM, the cows, the clover fields, the kind Serbian worker with big brown eyes who became her only friend. She sent home silk stockings from Würzburg and socks from Holland. She sewed dresses for German women on Sundays to earn sugar.
She never stopped hoping to come home.
The Archive
These letters survived the war, the Soviet era, Ukrainian independence, and a family move from Kyiv to Germany. In 2026, Maksym Prokopov — Raisa's grandson — digitized all 180 pages and had them transcribed with the help of AI.