Maria Ponamarowa, neé Danelowna, was born in the Ukrainian village of Orikove [Orechowo in Russian] near Rowenky (about 140 km north of Rostov on the Don) on May 25, 1923. She was married and the mother of a child when she was abducted from the occupied Soviet Union for forced labor in Nazi Germany in 1942.

On September 24, 1942 the Salzburg police registration office recorded the arrival of forced laborer Maria Ponamarowa, who had to wear an »OST« [East] identification patch on her clothing, at 15 Bucklreuthstraße. This »Eastern Worker« had to work there as a servant for an officer’s family. On November 23, 1942, after three months of forced labor in Salzburg, the 19 year old Maria Ponamarowa was dead – officially registered as a »suicide«.

Her burial place is unrecorded, but it can be assumed that her body, as with all of the victims of the terror regime made anonymous, was buried in the »Tomb of the Forgotten« in Salzburg’s municipal cemetery. The fates of her family – her husband and child, her parents and siblings in the Ukraine – lie also in darkness. We do know that forced laborers and their survivors were given no claim to victims’ compensation in liberated Austria.

Source

  • Salzburg City Archives
Author: Gert Kerschbaumer
Translation: Stan Nadel

Stumbling Stone
Laid 24.09.2019 at Salzburg, Bucklreuthstraße 15

<p>MARIA PONAMAROWA<br />
GEB. DANELOWNA<br />
JG. 1923<br />
UKRAINISCHE ZWANGSARBEITERIN<br />
TOT 23. 11. 1942</p>
Identification patch for »Eastern Workers«
Photo: Salzburg City Archives

All stumbling stones at Bucklreuthstraße 15