Andrej Iwanowitsch Moiseenko

Andrej Iwanowitsch Moiseenko was born in the early days of the Soviet Union. His life on the village collective farm was full of privation. He lost his mother when he was young, and his father was killed in 1941 in the first year of war after the German invasion. The Wehrmacht occupied Ukraine soon afterwards. While searching for food for his seven siblings, he was captured by German soldiers and sent to Germany as a forced labourer.

Andrej Iwanowitsch Moiseenko was taken to Leipzig, where he had to work for HASAG, an armaments company. In February 1944, he was accused of belonging to a resistance group. The Gestapo first detained him in the Riebeckstrasse ‘prison for foreigners’ in Leipzig and later sent him to Buchenwald. He carried out heavy labour under deadly conditions in the quarry there until the autumn of 1944. He was then transferred to the Wansleben subcamp, where he was liberated on 14 April 1945 by the US Army.

In July 1945, Andrej Iwanowitsch Moiseenko was drafted into the Red Army. He completed his military service in Babruysk (Belarus) and Minsk. In addition to working for a building combine and construction office, he eventually finished school and earned a university degree. Today Andrej Iwanowitsch Moiseenko is active in the Minsk History Workshop and the German Language Lovers’ Club. He visits the Buchenwald Memorial on the anniversaries of the liberation.

Find out more

Ja, Andrei Iwanowitsch: Film About a Life, Germany/Belarus 2018, Director: Hannes Farlock.