Letter from Kostec’kyj to the International Tracing Service
Eaghor G. Kostetzky
7052 Schwaikheim/Württ.
Am Mädchenrain 4
-Tel.: Winnenden 51211
June 9, 1965
To the
International Tracing Service
3548 Arolsen
Dear Sirs,
From June 1943 to early 1944, I was employed as an Ostarbeiter at the HANNOVER colliery in Bochum-Hordel. I was brought there from Winnitza (then Reichskommissariat Ukraine) via the Soest transit camp. After 22 years of uninterrupted residence in Germany, I am now making preparations for my application for citizenship in Germany, which I am seeking not least because I have been married to a German citizen for over 10 years.
I would therefore be very grateful if you could kindly issue and send me a written certificate on the basis of your files stating that, when and where I was brought to Germany as an Ostarbeiter.
My first name may be transcribed in the documentation there as ‘Igor’ or probably as ‘Ihor’, depending on whether it is pronounced in Russian or Ukrainian.
I was born on 14 May 1913.
Please let me know what fees I may send you in advance.
Should your research take longer, I would be grateful for a brief interim reply. I hope, however, that you will be able to issue me with the certificate without too lengthy an effort.
Please allow me to enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope.
Thank you very much in advance.
With the highest consideration
EG Kostetzky
In original German
Eaghor G. Kostetzky
7052 Schwaikheim/Württ.
Am Mädchenrain 4
-Tel.: Winnenden 51211
den 9. Juni 1965
An den
Internationalen Suchdienst
3548 Arolsen
Sehr geehrte Herren,
vom Juni 1943 bis zum Frühjahr 1944 war ich als Ostarbeiter in der Zeche HANNOVER in Bochum-Hordel beschäftigt. Ich wurde aus Winnitza (damaliges Reichskommissariat Ukraine) über das Durchgangslager Soest dorthin gebracht. Nach nunmehr 22-jährigem ununterbrochenem Aufenthalt in Deutschland treffe ich die Vorbereitungen für meine Einbürgerung in Deutschland, die ich nicht zuletzt deswegen anstrebe, weil ich seit über 10 Jahren mit einer deutschen Staatsbürgerin verheiratet bin.
Ich wäre Ihnen deshalb sehr dankbar, wenn Sie mir freundlicherweise anhand Ihrer Karteien eine schriftliche Bescheinigung darüber ausstellen und senden könnten, daß, wann und wohin ich als Ostarbeiter nach Deutschland gebracht wurde.
Mein Vorname darf in der dortigen Dokumentation als „Igor“ oder wohl als „Ihor“ transkribiert sein, je nachdem, ob er russisch oder ukrainisch ausgesprochen wird.
Ich bin am 14. Mai 1913 geboren.
Bitte teilen Sie mir mit, welche Gebühren ich Ihnen im voraus einsenden darf.
Sollten Ihre Nachforschungen längere Zeit in Anspruch nehmen, so wäre ich für einen kurzen Zwischenbescheid dankbar. Ich möchte jedoch hoffen, daß es Ihnen möglich sein wird, mir die Bescheinigung ohne allzu langwierige Bemühungen auszustellen.
Ich erlaube mir, zunächst einen frankierten und adressierten Umschlag beizufügen.
Herzlichen Dank im voraus.
Mit vorzüglicher Hochachtung
EG Kostetzky
Ihor Kostec’kyj was just one example of several hundred thousand individuals who were taken by the Nazi-Army from occupied eastern European territories and had to work as so-called “Ostarbeiter”, slaves in the Nazis service, in the German war industry. Before the war, Kostec’kyj was an intellectual, who – though born in Kyiv, Ukraine – had little consciousness of his “Ukrainiennes” before the fall of Carpatho-Ukraine in 1938 and was involved in several cultural, artistic and creative projects and initiatives. When he was mobilized to the Soviet Red Army with the start of the German invasion on the Soviet Union in 1941, Kostec’kyj was already in the process of changing his Russian sounding name “Iwan Merzljakov” to his, since then used, pen name “Ihor Kostec’kyj”. After the fall of Vinnytsia to the German army, Kostec’kyj was used by the Germans as an editor for the “Vinnyc’ki Visti”, a German occupation newspaper for the local population.
Kostec’kyjs documents, written immediately after the war, nevertheless showed that he was seemingly no prisoner of war when he was taken from the city of “Winniza” (the authorities meant the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia) and arrived in Germany on June 08, 1943. According to the historian Marko Robert Stech, Kostec’kyj was taken when he reported himself for duty to prevent a friend of him being taken instead. Via a transit camp in the city of Soest, he was then taken to the city of Bochum to work as an unskilled laborer in the “Hordel’sche Kruppwerke” metal plant. Working conditions in these plants were inhuman and the amount of people who died during such works were immensely high. Kostec’kyj however survived, most likely because the authorities in Nazi-German got aware again of his literary experience and decided to move him away from the hard labor in the metal plant and instead employ him in the “Vineta Propagandadienste”, first in Berlin, then in the city of Plauen. There he was, according to Stech, in a leading position in charge of publishing the German propaganda newspaper “Dozvillja” which was to be distributed to the other “Ostarbeiter” in German forced labor camps and plants. He seemingly stopped working at the Vineta-office in Plauen on July 6, 1944 and his further faith was unknown until he “re-appeared” in the Bavarian city of Fürth just after the end of the war, which prevented him from being forcefully repatriated to the Soviet Union where he would most likely have suffered from imprisonment, deportation or even execution because of his sheer service, even though unfree and forced, in the apparatus of the German war industry.
From the city of Fürth, he ended up in a Displaced Person Camp for Ukrainians in Bavaria, where he was finally able again to express his own beliefs and, at least in theory, to publish media with messages that he really wanted to send out to the world instead of writing propaganda newspapers.
Kostec’kyj himself, who for some reason transcribed his name sometimes as “Eaghor Kostetzky”, also wrote about his experiences of suffering as a forced laborer in the metal plant in a letter to the Arolsen Archives in 1965 where he asked for more documents on his case and an official confirmation of his past as a forced laborer because it could be considered in his supposed process of applying for German citizenship.