For a long time I didn’t believe that the Germans had killed my husband
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Yevdokiya Kepková was born on March 28, 1922, in the village of Boliki, Smolensk region, Russia. Her family owned a large estate. It was confiscated during the collectivisation of the 1930s and she and her relatives had to go to work in a kolkhoz. She graduated of a medical school and became a midwife. She married at eighteen. Her husband worked as an agronomist in a kolkhoz and because of his injured arm he avoided conscription to the army. The area in which they lived was occupied by the German army. Her husband was shot by the soldiers and she was left alone with a small child. She worked for German soldiers as a nurse. When the Red Army drew near the hospital where she worked, she was persuaded by the German soldiers to leave with us. There were fears among the people that the Soviet Army would revenge on their compatriots who worked for the Germans. Through Italy she got to a POW camp in Augsburg, Germany. In this camp Germans selected prisoners and distributed them to various job positions. She was chosen by the mayor of Augsburg and sent to the local maternity hospital. She survived the air raids on the city, met a Czech citizen Josef Kepka who was on forced labour in Germany and together they fled to Czechia in the last days of the war. They settled in Nejdek, where she worked as a midwife.
