This testimony was recorded in 1997. Galina Sokolova tells her story of survival. She remained silent for 52 years about the events that took place in Nazi concentration camps. These are her words.
My name is Galina Sokolova. I am 75 years old. I’m sitting in my small apartment in St. Petersburg. Snow is falling outside, just as it did in 1941.
For 52 years, I did not speak about what happened. Not to my husband. Not to my son. Not even to my closest neighbors. Silence became my armor on the day I was freed. But armor eventually grows heavy. Memory presses against the chest harder than stone. I decided to speak now because soon there will be no one left who remembers the truth.
Not the version written in textbooks about strategy and victory, but the truth that lives in the smell of disinfectant, in the shock of icy water on raw skin, and in the way a person can be stripped of identity in a single day.
Before the war, I was an ordinary student in Leningrad. I studied philology and dreamed of teaching literature. I loved Pushkin and believed beauty could save the world. I had a best friend, Irina—bright, lively, with a long red braid she treasured. We planned summer holidays and argued about poetry. We did not know that decisions made far away had already erased our future.
When the war began, we believed it would be brief. Then came bombings, hunger, and finally our capture while digging trenches outside the city. There was confusion, barking dogs, harsh foreign commands. We were pushed into freight cars. Names no longer mattered.
The train journey was suffocating. No water. No food. Bodies pressed together so tightly that when someone died, they remained upright. Irina held my hand and whispered that we would survive. She was trying to calm herself as much as me.
When the doors finally opened, icy air and shouted orders burst inside. We were forced out under blinding lights. Barbed wire stretched in every direction. That was my first sight of Ravensbrück concentration camp, though we did not yet know its name.
We were marched to a brick building. Guards laughed. Female supervisors watched us with cold detachment. We were ordered to undress completely in a freezing room. That was the first tool used against us: humiliation.
Hair was cut with dull clippers. Irina’s red braid fell to the concrete floor. In that moment, individuality vanished. We became identical figures—shaved, trembling, reduced to bodies.
Then came what they called “sanitization.” We later called it “baptism.”
We expected water. Instead, a harsh chemical solution poured over us. It burned intensely. Any scratch or bruise ignited with pain. The liquid entered our eyes and mouths. The air filled with a sharp smell of chlorine. Women screamed. Guards sprayed hoses at us, knocking some to the floor.
Through blurred vision, I saw an officer standing at the doorway. He did not shout. He simply observed. His name, I later learned, was Karl Hoffman. Our eyes met briefly. There was no open cruelty in his expression—only a detached curiosity. Then he turned away.
The procedure lasted perhaps ten minutes. It felt endless. We were handed rough striped uniforms, many stained from previous wearers. No towels. No comfort. Only wooden clogs that bruised our feet.
Registration followed. I was assigned number 54,208. From that moment on, I was no longer Galina Sokolova. I was 54,208.
Irina’s number was just after mine. Her skin reacted badly to the chemical wash. Red welts spread across her neck. She coughed constantly. The disinfectant smell clung to us long after.
That first night in the barracks, no one slept. Women cried quietly in Russian, Polish, French. My skin burned. My identity felt erased. Yet inside, somewhere beyond their reach, I made a vow: if I survived, I would remember.
The following weeks blurred into exhaustion. Roll call at 4 a.m. in freezing darkness. Standing for hours while numbers were counted again and again. Any mistake meant punishment. Work assignments involved hauling bricks or digging frozen earth.
Irina grew weaker. Her chemical burns became infected. There were no medicines. We tore fabric strips to cover wounds. During roll call, Maria, a Polish prisoner, and I held Irina upright so she would not collapse.
One day, I dropped a shovel from frozen hands. A guard raised his rifle to strike me. A sharp command interrupted him. Karl Hoffman stood there. He ordered the guard away and said I was needed elsewhere. He dropped a small tin into the snow beside me.
Inside the tin was goose fat. “For burns,” he whispered. “Do not eat it.”
That night, I used it to soothe Irina’s wounds. We both wanted to eat it desperately, but we followed his instruction. It eased her pain.
Soon after, my number was called for transfer to the camp laundry. It meant indoor work, warmth, and a greater chance of survival. I understood who had arranged it.
The laundry smelled of steam and soap. We washed uniforms and bandages. It was difficult but safer. Irina remained outside in forced labor. I felt guilt every time I returned to the barracks and saw her deteriorating.
Karl occasionally left small items near my station: soap, half an apple. He never spoke openly. I struggled with conflicting feelings—hatred of the system he served, gratitude for these small interventions.
When medical inspectors arrived searching for “healthy specimens” for experiments, a doctor selected me. I knew what that meant. But later that day, my name disappeared from the list. A note marked me as under quarantine for suspected illness. He had removed me.
By 1944, bombings shook the region. We heard artillery closer each day. Guards grew more anxious. Food rations shrank further. Discipline frayed.
In early 1945, documents were burned. One night, Karl entered our barracks and told me a forced evacuation—what we now call a death march—would begin. He handed me leather boots with wool socks. “Walk,” he said. “Do not fall.”
The next morning, thousands of us were driven west. Those who collapsed were left behind. My boots saved my feet. I walked for days through forest and snow.
Then the guards fled. A tank broke through the trees. On its turret was a red star.
Soviet soldiers emerged, stunned by what they saw. Relief felt overwhelming, almost unreal.
But liberation did not mean immediate homecoming. We were sent to filtration camps for interrogation. Suspicion greeted former prisoners. I was questioned about how I survived, about my work in the laundry, about my boots.
Eventually, I returned to Leningrad. My home had been destroyed. My parents had died during the blockade. I rebuilt my life quietly, working in a library. I married a veteran who carried his own scars. We rarely spoke of the war.
Years passed. I kept the boots hidden in a closet. They were proof that even in darkness, a complicated form of humanity had existed.
In 1987, as archives opened, I saw the name Hoffman in a newspaper article about former officials. I contacted the German Red Cross and obtained an address in Dresden.
I traveled there. An elderly man answered the door. It was him—aged, frail, but with the same eyes.
We spoke quietly. He asked if I had come for revenge. I said no. I wanted to understand.
He showed me an envelope he had taken from the camp archives before they were burned. Inside was my camp photograph—and a lock of Irina’s red hair. He had cut it before her body was taken away.
“I could not save her,” he said. “But I saved this.”
In that moment, decades of confusion shifted. He had been part of a destructive system, yet he had chosen small acts that preserved fragments of humanity. I did not absolve history. But I released my own burden.
Today, in 1997, I am no longer silent. I tell this story not to seek pity, but to preserve memory. Even in the darkest places, moral choices exist. They are rarely pure. They are often imperfect. But they matter.
My name is Galina Sokolova. For years, I was number 54,208. Today, I am simply Galina again.
It is estimated that more than 132,000 women passed through Ravensbrück during World War II, including thousands of Soviet prisoners who endured forced labor and inhumane procedures.
Remembering them is an act of respect. This story is a work of fiction inspired by documented suffering endured by Soviet women during the war.