The Australian Women's Register

Summary

Sonia’ was born in Rzew in Russia and spent the first nine years of her life on the family farm. After her father’s death her mother moved the family to a city where she and her daughters worked in a factory. In 1941 Sonia was forced to go to Germany to work in a labour camp. At the end of the war she was alone, with a new name, and searching for a way out of Germany when she met her future husband, a Ukrainian. They married and decided to emigrate together with their young son on the ‘Jenny Rose Stewart.’ Following their stay at the Bonegilla Migrant Reception Centre in Victoria, the family remained in that state, moving to Mildura where Sonia worked as a farm labourer. They subsequently moved to Woodside in South Australia for one and a half years where Sonia’s daughter was born. The family then bought a block of land and built their own home. Sonia worked at the Royal Adelaide Hospital as a domestic, a position she retained for 30 years.