She was born in 1932 in the village of Kind, Autonomous Republic of the
Volga-Germans. In 1941 she and her family were deported to the Krasnoyarsk
Territory. As from 1942 they spent the time of their special resettlement on the
Taimyr Peninsula. She worked as a fisherwoman and was well-known in the whole
area as a distinguished reindeer-breeder. Nowadays she lives in Dudinka.
… They deported us to the village of Sosnovka in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. Our mother Theresa Andreevna Pabst had four children. The elder sister, Yekaterina (Katharina) had just accomplished the seventeenth year of her life, brother Alexander was fifteen, David thirteen. I was the youngest child. Father died in 1933, the year of famine. I do not recall him at all.
In 1942 we were taken to the Taimyr Peninsula, the settlement of Potapovo, by steamship “Josef Stalin”.
They put us in some horsestables, for there was no other housing space. I was not in a position to attend school, for I had no appropriate clothes to wear. Hence, I remained illiterate for the rest of my life. I had to work hard, help my mother in the fishing business and in market gardening.
Our family somehow managed to survive exile, although it was a hard life. Many of our companions in misfortune were unable to stand all the strokes of fate: they either starved or died from diseases or hard labour, which was beyond their strength …
Recorded in the settlement of Potapovo in the spring of 1991.
