Polina Viktorovna Scherebzowa

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Polina Viktorovna Scherebzowa. Lit.Cologne , Cologne 2015

Polina Viktorovna Scherebzowa ( Russian Полина Викторовна Жеребцова ; born March 20, 1985 in Grozny , Checheno-Ingushetia , USSR ) is a writer and poet . She gained fame through the publication of her diary ( Дневник Жеребцовой Полины ), in which, as a young girl, she described her experiences during the Chechnya wars . The book has been translated into several languages.

She is also the author of a report on war crimes on the territory of the Chechen Republic from 1994 to 2004.

Drawing by Polina Scherebzowa, 1995

Der Spiegel : “ Politkovskaya described the war as a journalist, from the outside. Polina Scherebzowa tells from within, from the heart of darkness. "

Photo of Scherebzova from Chechnya
Polina Scherebzowa's diary, 1995

biography

childhood

Polina's father died when she was very young. Her mother Elena Scherebzowa worked in a large company. She devoted her free time to her daughter's education. Polina's maternal grandfather, with whom she was on friendly terms, was Anatoly Pavlovich Scherebzow, who had worked in Grozny as a TV journalist and cameraman for more than 25 years. Polina's maternal grandmother was an artist. Her paternal grandfather was an actor and musician and her paternal grandmother was an actress.

Polina Viktorovna Scherebzowa grew up in a family in which books such as the Torah , the Bible and the Koran were equally venerated. Since childhood, she studied the religions, history and philosophy of different peoples. Her favorite subject at school was literature. One of the popular words of her family was “We - the people of the world!” Referring to the different nationalities from which she came.

First Chechen War

At the beginning of the First Chechnya War (1994-1996), Polina Scherebzowa's grandfather Anatoly died. The hospital in Grozny on May Day Street, where the 72-year-old WWII veteran was staying for health reasons, came under fire from planes. Polina made the first serious entry in her diary. In it she gave nicknames to neighbors and friends. She wrote about funny and sad moments in life. Because of her Russian surname, she was repeatedly insulted at school after the military conflict in 1995. Her Russian neighbors and friends were also exposed to hostility, which she later wrote about in her documentary stories.

Polina Viktorovna Scherebzowa. 2011.

Second Chechnya War

Polina Scherebzowa's diary

In 1999 the Second Chechen War began in Grozny in the North Caucasus . Polina Scherebzowa was 14 years old at the time and was continuing her diary. While she was helping her mother in the central market in Grozny after school, there was fire and she was wounded in the leg. The attack on the market took place on October 21, 1999 and has been documented. Due to the injury and illness, Polina Scherebzowa and her mother could not leave Grozny despite the war. They went hungry and were evicted from their homes along with their neighbors. Polina Scherebzowa recorded these experiences in her diary.

Despite the sometimes life-threatening situation, Polina Scherebzowa continued to write in the hope that someone would find her notes and learn about the suffering of innocent civilians - children and old men during the war. Her main concern was to convince people not to wage war, especially within a state. In her diary, she also described her impression that before the conflict began in 1994, relations between the Russian and Chechen people in Chechen-Ingushetia were friendly.

In February 2000, five months after being wounded, Polina Scherebzowa was operated on in the 9th Moscow Hospital, an emergency hospital in the devastated Grozny. The largest of the 16 pieces of shrapnel were removed. She did not get any compensation.

post war period

In 2009, the first excerpts from Scherebzowa's diary were published in Russian media. Thereupon she was threatened anonymously according to her own statements and asked to stop the publication. However, in 2011 she published her diary as a book. In January 2012, due to increasing threats, she and her husband left Russia and applied for asylum in Finland.

Polina Scherebzowa was one of the finalists in the Andrei Sakharov journalists' competition in 2012 .

In 2013 Polina Scherebzowa was granted political asylum in Finland . She is involved in human rights work.

Tobias Rapp reviewed the book for Der Spiegel magazine and judged: "A child's voice tells of one of the great crimes of humanity over the past twenty years. Polina's diary could shake the world, as did Anne Frank's diary ."

Publications

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Polina Zherebtsova on the diary she kept as a child during the Chechen war. ВВС
  2. ↑ krugozormagazine.com/show/Chechnya (in Russian)
  3. ^ Report on war crimes in Chechnya in 1994-2004. (in English)
  4. ↑ Chechen diaries of Polina Zherebtsova
  5. ↑ A Girl's Nightmare in Chechnya
  6. ↑ Author of a book about Chechnya seeks asylum in Finland ( Memento of October 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) news.vdok.org, accessed on October 17, 2013.
  7. ↑ Polina was a Sakharov Prize finalist "Journalism as an act of Conscience" in 2012
  8. ↑ SPIEGEL The war diary of a young Chechen woman
personal data
SURNAME Scherebzowa, Polina Viktorovna
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Zherebtsova, Poline V .; Викторовна, Жеребцова Полина; Полины, Дневник Жеребцовой
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian writer and poet
DATE OF BIRTH March 20, 1985
PLACE OF BIRTH Grozny