Piotr Prymach, born 1905. Piotr was born a son of a worker in Kirowohrad in the Ukraine. Parallel to the war, fighting the Soviet army, the Nazis made offers to the inhabitants of the countries they were conquering. I.e., they offered to hose Ukranian people willing to work in the German Reich good conditions. Later, they simply deported people and forced them to work for almost no money under horrible conditions.

Anyway, Piotr, a skilled metalworker, was one of those convinced by the good conditions promised by the Nazis. As the Nazis regarded the Ukrainians to be the leading culture in Soviet, Piotr thought that the Ukrainians would be treated normally. Yet, he encountered a completely
different situation having arrived in Germany. He had to work 12 hours a day in an armament factory for a low wage, forced to eat bad food.

After work, he and his fellow Ukrainians were led at gunpoint to a camp near the factory. Here, Piotr had to sleep on straw mats and had no access to sanitary facilities. The camp simply had a row of holes dug into the ground, covered with raw planks. Fresh water was supplied by a well. The workers lived in constant fear because showing any sign of resistance or unwillingness, they would be deported to a concentration camp or even shot right where they were.

In 1943, Piotr had no way of contacting his family in the Ukraine or of getting news. He knew about the war, yet did not know when it would end and who the winner would be.