Masha / Maria

Bobruisk

1923–1941·Bobruisk, Belarus

Her father, Leiba Sirotkin, was a bookkeeper. Her mother had run a clothing store before the Bolsheviks came. They lived in a country house with no running water and no electricity — light came from a gasoline lamp, water from a well.

Masha had a sister, Hasia, and a brother, Grisha. At home they spoke Russian; the grandparents spoke Yiddish. She walked an hour each way to a public school where Jewish and Christian children sat together.

She planned to become a teacher and enrolled in college, but had not yet finished when everything changed.

It was a Jewish city.

Masha Klaynberg, Shoah Foundation testimony, 1997

The Ghetto

September 1941·Bobruisk, Belarus

In June 1941, the Germans arrived. The local police identified the Jewish families. By September, every Jewish person in Bobruisk had been forced into the ghetto.

Two or three families were crowded into each house. There were no windows, no doors, no heat. It was already cold in Belarus by October. There was no food.

They were held there for two months and twenty days.

In September 1941, they put every Jewish people in this city, Bobruisk, in the ghetto.

The Liquidation

November 1941·Bobruisk — Kamenka

The Germans told the ghetto residents to put on their best clothes and jewelry. Then they took everything. Trucks carried the people to the villages of Kamenka and Yalovica outside the city.

An estimated 7,000 Jews from the Bobruisk ghetto were murdered there in November 1941.

Her mother pushed her out of the crowd, toward the Russian bystanders. She said nothing. The police did not notice. The Germans did not notice. She survived because she did not look Jewish.

I survived because my face was — I didn’t look like a Jewish girl. And the mother put me in with the Russian people.

The Countryside

Late 1941 – January 1942·Rural area near Bobruisk·on foot

She escaped to the countryside where her parents had worked on a collective farm. People there recognized her from childhood.

She found refuge with two Jewish families — the Rapkins and the Rusinovs. They took her in and shared their food.

In late January, something told her to leave. She and two other girls went to a Russian family for breakfast. A boy ran in — twelve or thirteen years old — shouting that the police and Germans were coming for the Jewish families. They fled to a small forest and watched as the families who had sheltered her were taken away.

I lived with them. They give me food.

Village to Village

February – March 1942·Belarus countryside·on foot

She went first to a man named Shinkarenka, whose family she had known as a child. He had told her once: if something happens, come to me. She hid behind a large brick stove. When the family was out, she cleaned the house, washed clothes, peeled potatoes.

But a woman discovered her and screamed — "You're hiding a Jewish girl! They will burn the village!" After that, Masha left.

She wandered from village to village. Sometimes she came to a house and said: I am a refugee. Not that she was Jewish. People gave her food and a place to sleep. The Belarusians and Ukrainians, she said, were very, very good people.

I wandered from one village to another village. I wandered, wandered.

Antonovka

March – June 1942·Antonovka, Gomel Region, Belarus·on foot

She arrived in March. A woman named Safiya took her in — her husband was in the Red Army, and she needed help with the children and the farm.

For three months, this was something close to stability — though not safety. She milked the cow, worked in the garden, looked after the children. It was labor for shelter.

In the last week of June, the police came with a German officer and took her. She asked where they were taking her. They said, “You don’t ask questions.”

Where are you taking me? — You don’t ask questions.

Priluki

June 1942·Priluki, Ukraine·captured

They brought her to a house filled with young girls and boys. They were told they were being taken to Germany for work.

At registration, a police officer asked her name. She did not have documents — her Jewish passport was gone, abandoned, destroyed. She gave the name Maria Shinkarenka.

He gave her a paper. That paper became her identity for the next three years.

The police asked my name. I told him ‘Maria Shinkarenka.’

Stuttgart

Summer 1942·Stuttgart, Germany·by train

The journey from Priluki to Stuttgart crossed the full breadth of occupied Europe. She was one of thousands of young people from the East sent into forced labor.

She stayed in Stuttgart for about three weeks. Then they put her on a train heading north.

Then they put us in trains and brought us to Germany.

Ordensburg Krössinsee

1942–1945·Falkenburg, Pomerania·by train

Ordensburg Krössinsee, near Falkenburg in Pomerania, had been built as an elite training school for the Nazi party. During the war, it held forced laborers. About a hundred girls worked there.

She wore a patch marked "OST" — identifying her as a laborer from the East. She was Maria Shinkarenka from Ukraine.

For nearly three years she kept silent. The other girls did not talk about religion. They were young, from families that were not religious.

From June 1942 to March 25, 1945.

Nobody I told, nobody I told about Jewish.

The Front Approaches

Early 1945·Falkenburg area

In 1945, standing behind the building where they lived, she saw Katyusha rockets. The Russian army was approaching.

The routine ended. Fear began.

I thought the Germans might kill everybody.

The Escape

March 1945·Near Falkenburg·by wagon

They put everyone from the camp onto horses and wagons. No one was told where they were going. She believed they were being taken to be killed.

When the wagon stopped, she and one woman got out.

I thought they were going to kill us. And I escaped.

The Collapse

March 1945·Near Falkenburg·on foot

They came to a German house and asked to stay the night. During the night there was fighting — Russian, German, Polish armies. In the morning, it was quiet.

They found Italian soldiers locked in a building. Polish officers came, found the key, opened the lock. German soldiers were hiding in the basement and were taken prisoner.

Multiple armies, abandoned prisoners, soldiers hiding in basements. In the morning, the Germans were gone.

We found Italian soldiers locked in a building.

The Truth

1945·Soviet-controlled territory

A Russian soldier found them and brought them to a large house filled with people — French, German, Russian. He told them: you are now with the Russian KGB.

At two o'clock in the morning, a young officer came for her. A military captain asked: where are you from? She told him the Maria Shinkarenka story — the same one she had repeated for three years.

Then he asked: were you a Young Pioneer? She cried.

She told him: everything I told you is wrong. I am a Jewish girl.

The captain told her: nobody knows you are Jewish. When you go home, you can stay as you are — not Jewish — or you can go back to being Jewish.

I am a Jewish girl.

Bobruisk Again

1945–1980·Bobruisk, Belarus

She returned to Bobruisk and registered herself as Jewish. Everyone there knew who she was — her friends, her mother's friends, her school friends.

An official questioned her: why did you stay in Ukraine? Why didn't you go to the partisans? She told him — in 1941, at the beginning of 1942, there were no partisans. And the partisans did not take Jewish people.

She married Alexander — Sasha. There was no wedding, no white dress. Just a registration and a small dinner with friends. No family was present — not for him, not for her.

Their sons were born — Lev in 1946, Joseph in 1953.

I came to my city, Bobruisk, and I took my registration in the archive, and I am Jewish.

A Life Rebuilt

1980–2009·Bobruisk — Italy — United States

Joseph finished school with a gold medal but was denied entry to medical school. The official told him: “We need national cadres, not Jewish — two percent Jewish.”

She had survived the war, reclaimed her name, and rebuilt her life — but the antisemitism had not ended. In the Soviet Union, it was institutional: quotas in education, barriers in employment, a ceiling on Jewish life. It was this that drove the family to leave.

In 1979, Joseph emigrated through Italy to America. In 1980, Masha and Alexander followed. Lev and his family came nine years later.

Her grandson asked her once: you had a grandma? A grandfather? She did not know how to tell him.

On January 23, 1997, in Hollywood, Florida, she sat before a camera and told this story.

I think it is the best time in my life, when I live here. It's a pain that my brother and sister didn't come to see this life.

Masha Klaynberg, Shoah Foundation testimony, 1997