Prodigious talent: 9-year-old interpreter rescues stranded Ukrainian

By Maria Wolf

Translated by Colin Rae

 

Volodymyr Dshelali was a contemporary witness to, and survivor of, one of Dachau’s subcamps. In May 2018, he and his daughter travelled from their native Ukraine to Germany to attend the inauguration of the Mühldorfer Hart concentration camp memorial to the east of Munich. Klein Wolf Peters supported the event by providing a team of interpreters for the English-, French-, Russian-, and Hungarian-speaking participants. During a break, Volodymyr told us about his arduous journey to reach the event. He and his daughter were already exhausted by the time they heaved their bags off the luggage carousel and went to meet the driver from the Bavarian state ministry. But when they emerged through the automatic sliding doors into arrivals, the driver was nowhere to be seen among the throng waiting to greet friends and loved ones. The flight from Ukraine had arrived five hours late. No one seemed inclined to help the frail man and his daughter, neither of whom spoke German or English. All it said on their itinerary was that they would be picked up. What were they supposed to do now?

Finally, one among the waiting crowd noticed that the pair were in trouble and went to help. It was a nine-year-old Russian boy who was growing up in a bilingual family in Munich. Nikolay (not his real name) addressed them in Russian, asked whom they were looking for, and helped them track down the driver. “An angel,” Volodymyr smiled as he finished telling us the story, “an interpreter, just like you!”

That was 2018. Now, of course, Volodymyr’s touching story is the fate of many. This year, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have endured even more harrowing odysseys, often with no guarantee of a warm reception at their journey’s end. Many of our Russian and Ukrainian interpreter colleagues are working around the clock to help the new arrivals, more often than not providing support that goes way beyond the ambit of their normal jobs. In situations like these, language services tend to spill over into social services that exceed the linguistic, technical, and intercultural skill set of even the most qualified interpreter. Professional interpreters know their limits and uphold the ethical principles of neutrality that they were taught. But there are situations in which interpreters can’t resist going the extra linguistic mile for their clients. This might involve exerting pressure to expedite an administrative process, offering advice, helping to find accommodation, or simply lending a sympathetic ear with the assurance that what is said will go no further – all virtues of a human (as opposed to a smartphone) interpreter that are not to be underestimated, even in less dramatic contexts.

When I’m interpreting, the chats I have with clients on the sidelines of events are often more about empathising than analysing; they’re a way to forge a bond with the client, make them feel that they are in safe hands, and help break the ice. This reassurance is important; after all, most of these people are linguistically cut off from other participants – otherwise they wouldn’t need me in the first place. It’s in these kinds of incidental chats that you get to hear incredible life stories like Volodymyr’s. Having joined the Ukrainian resistance as a teenager, he was eventually caught “tinkering” – as he put it – with German Wehrmacht vehicles and arrested. In 1942, he was deported to Germany. Following a failed escape attempt during forced labour in Saarland, he was sent to the concentration camp at Dachau. Shortly before the end of the war, while attached to a work crew dispatched from the Mühldorfer Hart subcamp, he managed to escape the inhuman conditions of his captivity, hiding on a farm until the US Army broke through.

A man of many talents who went on to become a music teacher, Volodymyr wrote numerous poems as a way of processing his experience of the war. After the event at Mühldorfer Hart, Volodymyr and his daughter joined us for coffee and he read some of his Russian poems to us. Since I don’t speak the language, I focused my attention on the melody. The humble, tender, and whimsical smile that accompanied his words gave no indication of his poems’ subject matter. His aim was to ensure that the fates, suffering, and deaths of persecuted and murdered people be not forgotten. As a contemporary witness, he visited the Dachau camp many times, and his addresses there always warned of the dangers of war and violence. Volodymyr died in his hometown of Mariupol on 13 November 2020. He was at least spared the tragedies of 2022.

Four years have passed since that inauguration event, but I will never forget meeting Volodymyr Ivanovich Dshelali and hearing his life story and testimony – which are as relevant today as ever. In many places around the world, the actions of humans produce new contemporary witnesses every day. Their stories are important and should be given a global stage, even if they will all too often fall upon deaf ears. As translators and interpreters, we are happy to do our part to help relay these accounts, so that as many people as possible can take warning, courage, and hope from them. Perhaps Nikolay will grow up to be an interpreter, too, and help a new generation of contemporary witnesses share similar stories.