trotzdem da! 
Katharina Sämann grew up in Worpswede near Bremen, known as the “artists’ village”. However, she did not feel at home there and from age 18 lived in other towns and abroad. As a pensioner, she returned to the house of her late mother Anna Sämann in 2010 and worked as a volunteer in a small art museum. She tried to find out more about her father. Experiences in her childhood led her to suspect that her father might have been a Soviet prisoner of war. But it was not until Katharina wanted to get married at age 21 that she learnt her father‘s name from her mother and grandmother. In the 1980s, Katharina travelled to the Soviet Union with her mother. She hoped that this holiday together would include a clarifying discussion about her parents’s history. However, this would not happen until 2000, when they both took part in a documentary about women who had been convicted under National Socialism for having relationships with forced labourers or prisoners of war. Katharina now knows that her father came from Moscow and was already married when he met Anna Sämann. Katharina therefore has never attempted to contact his family.
“Children don‘t ask if they feel it‘s not wanted.”
The picture shows one of Katharinas‘s few moments together with her mother. Because Anna Sämann worked in Delmenhorst after the end of the war, Katharina grew up mainly with her grandparents in Worpswede.
Photo: unknown. Private property Sämann
The Wehrmacht transferred Vasily Kozlov from the Stalag X-B Sandbostel prisoner-of-war camp to the Gestapo in Bremen. He faced the death penalty for his relationship with Anna. His subsequent fate remains unknown to this day.
Central Archives of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, Podolsk
Anna Sämann worked in a small dairy near Bremen, receiving milk deliveries from the neighbouring villages. During the Second World War, many farmers had their milk brought to the dairy by the prisoners of war who had to work on their farms. One of these prisoners of war was Vasily Petrovich Kozlov from the Soviet Union. Although they could barely communicate, Anna and Vasily fell in love and met secretly after work. This was only possible because others looked the other way. When Anna became pregnant, the relationship was betrayed to the police, who arrested Anna after Katharina‘s birth. In January 1945, the Bremen District Court sentenced her to 15 months of penal servitude and three years loss of honour. Shortly before the end of the war, Anna Sämann was released early.
The Wehrmacht housed Soviet prisoners of war under worse conditions, fed them more poorly, and assigned them to harder labour than they did the prisoners of war from other countries.
Photo: unknown. Sandbostel Camp Memorial
Anna Sämann asks a “Tracing Service for Missing Foreigners” in Göttingen for information about Vasily Kozlov, 15 July 1946
Anna Sämann suspected that Vasily had been sent to a concentration camp. She searched for him for years, but never saw him again.
Private property Sämann
After the end of the war, Anna Sämann tried in vain to be recognised as a victim of National Socialism. It was not until 2002 that Katharina was able to obtain a payment of 1,500 euros for her mother.
Private property Sämann
Katharina Sämann already had the feeling of being different from the other children when she was at school. Because her father had been a Soviet prisoner of war, her classmates made fun of her as a “Russian child!” The children thus adopted the derogatory attitudes of their parents. Racism towards people from Eastern Europe continued after the end of National Socialism, particularly given the backdrop of the Cold War. When Katharina wanted to get married in the mid-1960s, her fiancé‘s father reportedly said: “What, you want to marry her? From someone like that?” When she returned to Worpswede, she spoke to former classmates about the verbal abuse she had received at school, but they were unwilling to recall those memories.
Today, Katharina Sämann is self-assured when dealing with her family history. She is also involved with the Sandbostel Camp Memorial, which supported her in searching for her father.
Photo: Johanna Becker. Sandbostel Camp Memorial
After the end of the war, Anna Sämann tried in vain to be recognised as a victim of National Socialism. It was not until 2002 that Katharina was able to obtain a payment of 1,500 euros for her mother.
Private property Sämann
