Asia Matveyuk was interviewed by Zhanna Litinskaya for Centropa in Kherson in 2002. She was born in the shtetl of Novopoltavka in the Nikolaev region in 1919.

I went with doctors and medics to drag away the wounded from the front. And I became an agitator for German troops.

My father volunteered for the army in early July 1941. On August 7th, retreating Red army troops were moving through the region and I enlisted in an engineering brigade. I didn’t even have time to say goodbye to my family.

Because of my medical training I worked alongside frontline doctors. I was given a medical bag and a gun. Soon I became the pharmaceutical supervisor. We kept retreating, but for whatever reason, I had no fear in battle. I dragged the wounded, applied bandages, and helped them as much as I could.

In late September 1941, we arrived in Kuibyshev—they call it Samara now—and we rebuilt our Red Banner Division #235, which had been badly decimated.

That took until March 1942, and I was promoted to the chief of the regimental pharmacy. I slept in a dirt hut under an overcoat. A few times officers asked me to share their bed and become their combat girlfriend, as it was called then. No thank you.

I had trouble only once when a sergeant said in front of everyone: ‘Don’t touch Asia, she is keeping herself safe for Abram,’ which was clearly an antisemitic taunt. I slapped his face good and hard right there. I should also mention that this guy got a good telling-off from other officers that day.

I went with doctors and medics to drag away the wounded from the front. And I became an agitator for German troops.

Here I could make good use of those German lessons I had when I was young. I was in a Jeep with a huge loudspeaker where I was reading my announcements in German, calling for the soldiers to drop their weapons and come over to our side.

I would tell them about their wives and children waiting for them back in Germany. I usually didn’t get very far as they would empty their guns in my direction, and we had to speed away.

So, we came back the next day and I started all over again.

During the war, the Germans murdered Asia’s mother, grandmother, sister, and all her cousins. Asia Matveyuk served as a medic and pharmacist in the Soviet Army until 1946. After the war Asia married Vasiliy Matveyuk and had two daughters. She worked as the director of a pharmacy and remained in Kherson. She passed away in 2008.