Born in 1928 in the hamlet of Klarus (Glarus), ASSR of the Volga Germans.
Deported to the Novoselovsk District, Krasnoyarsk Territory in September 1941.
Lived in the National Taimyr Region as a special settler as from 1942. Fisherman
and hunter. Today he lives in the settlement of Levinskiye Peski, Dudinka
District.
..... On the 19th of September 1942 we arrived in Dudinka by steamship „S. Ordzhonikidze“, where they dropped us off right on the banks of the river Yenisey. We were in a threesome – mother Emilie Samuilovna Groo, brother David (12 years old) and I. I was fourteen years old at that time.
We were 108 individuals in all – women and children – and they abandonned us in the settlement of Levinskiye Peski, which is situated on the left banks of the river not far from Dudinka. In the settlement there was nothing but a single four-roomed house, an old store and a barracks without roof, without any windows and without flooring. And we were chased just in this barracks. They inexactly measured off a living space of about one and a half meters to be used by three persons each: well, here you can live as you like. We did not have any warm clothes. Just some old lace-up shoes and galoshes. We were forced to work in the presence of guards, but we did not have to form up when leaving for work. The lads were ploghing and fishing till late in the autumn. Nonetheless, our life was not as hard as the life of all those, who had been deported to the lower reaches of the river Yenisey, yet farther away from Dudinka.
Recorded in the settlement of Levinskiye Peski in 1991