VK 1947 DP Camp Resettlement Record1

This is the earliest surviving document that has emerged so far. It confirms Valentina's oft-repeated story about how she avoided being returned to the Soviet Union after the War. She had been taken under the wing of a family of ethnic Russians from Lithuania, which had been an independent republic between the wars. She was assigned with them to a UNRRA DP (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration Displaced Persons) camp near Alfeld in Lower Saxony and masqueraded successfully as a Lithuanian citizen by making her maiden name of Cherenkevich look Lithuanian -- Čerenkevičius -- abbreviating her name from Valentina to Wale and falsifying her place of birth from Rogachev in the Belorussian SSR to Panvėžys in Lithuania. Her claims of language skills, apart from in her native Russian, were also fanciful. But it did the trick!