In 1941, Maria Harkavenko, a resident of the village of Paryshkiv, Kyiv region, was taken to Germany for forced labor. She joins the ranks of the so-called Ostarbeiters and with her tears and sweat signs a shameful page in human history that will be included in textbooks under the title “Modern Slavery”.

In 1943, Maria sent three letters home, but none of them were received by her family. Only in the early 2010s did it become known by chance where Maria's letters had gone.

After the liberation of Kyiv by Soviet troops, 57,000 letters from Ukrainian Ostarbeiters were ordered not to be delivered to their addressees from the Kyiv post office. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian families are left without news of their relatives.

All the undelivered letters are miraculously preserved in the funds of the State Archives of the Kyiv Region. A group of historians and volunteers led by Vitalii Hedzem, director of the Makariv Local History Museum, became interested in them. This is how the NeprOsti Letters project was born.

On their own initiative and at their own expense, the activists digitize old letters, make accurate photocopies of them, search for the authors' relatives and organize special events in villages in the Kyiv region to present the letters of the ostarbeiters. Over the past two years, more than 50 meetings have been held and 700 copies of the letters have been handed over.

Among other things, the volunteers get hold of letters from Maria Garkavenko. The woman shares with her family the hardships of life in captivity: “I received a parcel, for which I am very grateful that you do not forget me, and I divided two cloves of garlic into pieces and ate them so deliciously for the first time in a year and a half.”

Letters from Ukrainian forced laborers to their homeland are filled with sadness for their families and the pain of hopelessness. The authors do not know if they will ever return home. They also do not know that most of them will be thrown into concentration camps upon their return, while the rest will live for many years with the stigma of being collaborators.

“When will I see you, my family, or maybe I won't have to. I cannot describe and tell you how much I miss you all. I often remember everyone,” Maria Harkavenko writes to her father.

In 2020, Maria Harkavenko turned 100 years old. A large, close-knit family gathered for the anniversary. Instead of a gift, the NeprOsti Letters project team presented the woman with three of her letters, which had been sent to Paryshkos for 77 years.