The ashes of our loved ones and the graves of our forefathers

Author: Alena Petrovna Holzmann, student of the 11th term, School N° 12 of general education in Novotroitskoe, Minusinsk District, Krasnoyarsk Territory.

Project leader: Oleg Nikolaevich Dmitrienko, history teacher, School N° 12 of general education in Novotroitskoe, Minusinsk District, Krasnoyarsk Territory.

2004

From the very beginning and, even
before the enacting of any laws,
all people are in possession of a piece of land,
that is they have the right to stay,
where nature or chance assigned them a place.

Kant

There are two important feelings,
our hearts are nourishing on –
our love for the ashes of our loved ones
and our love for the graves of our forefathers.

A.Pushkin

Quotation of a conversation which took place between a girl and her grandmother Maria Holzmann :

- Grandma, where are the ashes of your loved ones? In Germany?

- No, darling, the ashes of my loved ones were scattered to the four winds all over Russia, from the Volga all the way up to Siberia.

- And where are the graves of our forefathers?

- They arescattered all over Russia, as well.

- Grandma, but which is our home country then – Germany or Russia?

- Originally I am from the river Volga, but “at home” is where we live and where we are going to live in the future.

This was the kind of conversation which took place between an 11-year old girl and her 86-year old grandmother – Maria Petrovna Holzmann, maiden name Kruk, who was born in the Russian Empire and later became a witness of the turbulent construction of Soviet order and the Soviet regime, who lived in the ASSR of the Volga Germans until 1941 and then learned from the papers that “obviously the German population residing in the Volga Rayon is harboring thousands upon thousands of subversives and spies” and that the USSR government “has therefore found it necessary to liquidate the Volga german Republic and resettle its entire German population in other regions of the Soviet Union”.

Starting with these sad news, the German population of the Soviet Union began to bear its heavy cross, which had been imposed on the people just because of their national characteristics. The Germans were displaced from their places of residence, from their fixed abode, and many of them later left the country, which had become their home country in the 18th century. My ancestors were torn away from their cultural and historic environments – a serious, massive blow which lead to an unimaginable tragedy. In the end, all this set in movement a phenomenon which we experience today as mass leave to Germany, where people intend to have a fixed abode for the rest of their life. Maybe, you will not agree to my opinion; however, it seems to me as if we might not only consider the events of the year 1941 an enormous exodus of Germans from Russia but also the beginning of a process of return to their historical origin.

In all fairness we talk about mass repressions of Stalin’s regime towards the Volga-Germans,in all fairness we offer examples of victims and tragedies,in all fairness we add losses, but be comparatively seldom talk about the fact that the majority of today’s ethnic and non-ethnic Germans, who could be of great service to Russia, are striving to leave the country.

The object of my paper is to make the reader think, to give my thoughts on the fate and history of my ancestors from my father’s side – of great-grandmother Maria Petrovna Holzmann and grandfather Theopold Viktorovich Holzmann – and trying to explain the structure and characteristics of the Russian nation by giving examples about concrete persons and human fates. It is my aim and wish to report about what my ancestors were thinking at that time, how they used to live, when they felt like strangers among those who they had thought to be theirs, and to impart an imagination of the spirit of fateful times right in the middle of the 20th century.

I was able to realize the present paper with the aid of:

1. meetings with relatives;

2. reports given by great-grandmother Maria Holzmann, grandfather Theopold Holzmann and my father Peter Theopold Holzmann;

3. archival documents and books;

4. journalistic materials.

Author: Alena Petrovna Holzmann, student of the 11th term, School N° 12 of general education in Novotroitskoe, Minusinsk District, Krasnoyarsk Territory.

Contents

• Instead of an introduction
1. On the cusp of great events
2. The fateful 1940s
3. Life after the war
• Instead of an epilogue

Instead of an Introduction

Dear great-grandma, dear great-grandpa! I am standing here, on a Russian village cemetery, in front of the graves of my ancestors. The only thing I can do is to revive and keep our conversations about your fate, which represents the fate of all of us, in my mind. Forgive me for disturbing your peace – you are united in this place, but the others …..

• Grandfather Emmanuel and his family left from here …

• Uncele Ewald and his family left from here …

• Aunt Elsa and her family left from here …

• Uncle Vladimir and his family left from here, left from here,left from here …

• Opa Theopold is dead.

• They all passed away or left the country; the only family which decided to stay here
  is my – Alena’s) family.

Statistics about family members who left the country for Germany between 1997 and 2004:

1

Like many of their fellow-countrymen, my great-grandparents came to Russia after the publication of the manifesto of Empress Catherine II on the 22 July, in which she invited people from abroad to come to Russia for permanent settling and work their as tillers or artisans.

“We decided to follow the appeal of Catherine, the Russian empress, and set out for the east –a long and exhausting way into the unknown. We felt attracted by descriptions of the fabulous life there, which we envisioned in our imagination, although we were afraid of the unknown at the same time. We – that is the Germans from the embankment of the river Rhine, from the regions adjacent to the Baltic Sea; we – that is citizens from a different nationality, natives of Lübeck, Hesse, Berlin, Gdansk and Königsberg, citizens from Poland and Denmark, Sweden and Italy, inhabitants of numerous European villages, towns and countries”.

Based on the standard of knowledge about the events which were to follow during the first half of the 20th century, we may assume that the decision of our “paternal founders” turned out to be a fatal mistake. I see this from a different angle: if their removal to Russia was based on the promptings of their heart, their brains, their own will and – some kind of a historic necessity, then they took the right choice. For in the new places they worked diligently, brought up children and were happy.

A particularly compact German diaspora resettled on the banks of the Volga. Due to a decree passed by Lenin the Labour Commune of the Volga Germans was founded in 1918. It was re-organized into an autonomous republic in 1934; the town Engels became its capital.

What a big misapprehension! While, in the 19th century, nobody doubted that the future would look much better than the present, the 20th century clearly showed that things would even develop into the worse.

At the beginning of the 20th century people at first noticed just a few symolic “minor details” which soon were to form the background of the occurrences yet to come.

Between 1916 and 1920, under the reign of the Tsar, and later, after the Soviets had brought about his downfall,all German parish schools were closed down.

From 1926-1936 German farmers were being dispossessed. This was the time of “dekulakization”, the expropriation of rich peasants, who were displaced immediately afterwards and then physically exterminated. Between 1931 and 1935 all German churches were destroyed.

Between 1936 and 1940 all German schools were closed and liquidated.

2

All national groups in our country, among them the Soviet Germans , considered the beginning of the Great Patriotic War in 1941 as a general tragedy for the entire people, and they were all willing to defend their fatherland against the enemy. From incomplete information we learn that between the 22 and 24 June 1941 the military commissariat received 1060 applications from citizens living in the Autonomous Republic of the Volga Germans, who expressed their sincere wish to volunteer as soldiers of the Red Army. During the following month of war the number of applications increased to 25000; however, German men were not accepted for front-line duty.

On the 28 August 1941, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR enacted Ukase N° 21-160 “About the resettlement of all Germans living in the Volga Region”.

Photos which were taken in the pre-war period are lying in front of me.I see smiling and laughing people,newly-weds,innocent babies, boys and girls, who were probably making peaceful plans for their future.

According to information from the historic V.G. Fuks (Fuchs), 423110 individuals were displaced from the Saratov Region and the Republic of the Volga Germans. The displaced persons were transported away by 158 trains. 33 of them arrived in the Krasnoyarsk territory. They had departed from the railroad station in Engels on the 20 September. The arrival date of the first citizens resettled by force was the 5 October 1941. Their final destination –the town of Abakan. Thus, the people had been en route for more than two weeks. During this time they had to cope with considerable inconveniences; most of them were children.

From Moscow till
the very edge of the country,
from the mountains in the very south
up to the ocean in the very north,
man is walking about in his vast home country
like his own master.
He enjoys his fancy-freelife, while
the waters of the Volga are flowing on and on.
Young people will always find ways.
And we will always demonstrate respect for the old.

Our family was unable to preserve any photos from the period 1941-1958; however, the are in possession of certificates (N° 816 dated the 18.09.1941) about their resettlement to the Krasnoyarsk Territory,and about their release from special resettlement (dated the 02.02.1956, based on the Ukase of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet dated the 13.12.1955).

From such documents we may derive that people who lived in this vast country, really happened to get to the most northern peripheral regions. From the accounts and memoirs of my great-grandmother and my grandfather I learned that all this meant the direct way for young people into the “Labour Army” and the road to kingdom come for the old.

The actual displacement of the residents of the Republic of the Volga Germans in August – September 1941 varied from village to village. In some villages the Germans almost had no time to pack up at least a few belongings; they were already deported in the very first days of September, just one or two days after the enforcement of the ukase. As grandmother told us, their village of Preiß (Preuß), canton of Seelmann, was surrounded by NKVD troops on the 16.09.1941. One day later they were given the possibilty to pack up a few personal belongings, and in the afternoon, the entire village population was taken to the train station. The NKVD workers have to be treated justly, for they carried out the operation correctly – everyting was well organized and in proper order. As everybody is no doubt aware, military actions at the fronts were not very successful in those days.

On the 18 September 1941 the following members of my father’s family were resettled to Siberia by force: Anna Johannovna Holzmann (born 1895), Viktor Eduardovich Holzmann (born 1914),Maria Petrovna Holzmann (born 1914), Erika Viktorovna Holzmann (born 1934), Ewald Viktorovich Holzmann (born 1936), Vladimir Viktorovich Holzmann (born 1938), Theopold Viktorovich Holzmann (born 1940), Viktor Viktorovich Holzmann (who was born in Khakassia in 1941 and died immediately after his birth), Ewald Eduardovich Holzmann (born 1916), Anna Johannovna Holzmann (born 1920) and Leonid Ewaldovich Holzmann (born 1940). I could compile the same kind of alist with regard to my great-grandmother’s family, for she had a lot of children, too, and their parents had families with many children, as well.

Affliction and distress are our impulse to act,
and only this is what makes us feel aware of our existenc.
Kant

As a consequence of the prevailing conditions of life the number of first and surnames considerably diminished during the compulsory resettling process and during the first time in the new places of residence. All I can say myself is that during the first year after their arrival in Krasnopol, Altai Region, Khakassia, my great-grandmother lost three out of five children.

What does Seneka state? Where do we find the dead? Just in the place, where the unborn are.

As far as age structure is concerned the Germans were “quite young” in 1941. Three quarters of the German ethnos was represented by children and young people in the age of 0 to 35. Denatality and the increase of the death rate was a particularly drastic phenomenon with the Germans. Denatality was mainly caused by the fact that family bonds were torn apart for a long period of time and men and women were mobilized to the labour army. The extremely high mortality rate, particularly with children, was the result of a very ill state of health of their mothers, the impossibility to look after them and feed them conveniently and the lack of most elementary, common conditions in everyday life. Nowadays, we can hardly believe how people manage to live in a dug-out for more than seven years, without being able to speak and understand the Russian or Khakassian languages, surrounded by and having to associate with people the majority of which considered them as traitors. It is possible to live and survive, but only by making enormous moral and human sacrifices.

The census of population carried out in the Soviet Union in 1959 showed that the correlation between the sexes had been destroyed to a larger extent with the German village population living in the Krasnoyarsk Territory than with Russian families. The share of women among them amounted to approximately 54,6% (Russians 53,3%), men –about 45,4% (Russians 46,6%). This means that there were approximately as many as in 1941 at the moment of deportation. Moreover, German men did not fight at the front. Deportation and compulsory resettlement ravaged the German ethnos considerably worse than the war effected the rest of the people.

All four grown-upmen of the Holzmann family were mobilized into the Labour Army, two of them perished, one ended up as an invalid. Ît is a rather astonishing fact that, judging from their number, as many died in the Labour Army as on the battle fields; however, they were not killed by bullets, shell splinters or other projectiles, but died from hunger and cold, from dysentery and from all those mockings and humiliations on the part of criminals and guard details.

3

We somehow all depend on those times, for if my great-grandfather had not returned home,neither my family nor I would exist in this world. My great-grandfather, Eduard Holzmann, is not merely an active housekeeper, but also a person who likes to hold important posts.He has been a communist since 1940. The true vigor of this man was not based on his desire to be active, to engage himself, but on his unshakable calm.I have no idea about what he was thinking of his fatherland and the power, which dealt that severly and even cruelly with him; he never talked about this. I merely learned from my grandfather Theopold Viktorovich that great-grandfather was unable to bear the smell of fir needles and that he forced all his children born after the war to use nothing but the German language at home. My great-grandmother was always keeping a copious supply of dried fruits, salt, matches, beans and papirossi. They practised this habit in order not to be compelled in hard times to have to feed on ground squirrels, stinging nettles and frozen potatoes from the kolkhoz field.

In 1971 great-grandfather set off to the places where his dead relatives rest in peace.He visited the graves of our forefathers in the former ASSR of the Volga Germans, the area, where the small town of Preuß and the canton of Seelmann had been situated a long time ago. Great-grandfather, in fact, succeeded in tracing the graves of his ancestors, and I am not in the position to tell you, what kind of a feeling he must have had in that very moment – probably deep love, maybe disappointment, as well, a certain indisposition, lack of understanding and nostalgia – heaven knows. Did the dug-out in Khakassia become his home, the places of preliminary residence,until they finally removed to Novotroitskoe for eternal refuge? For my great-grandfathers their parents’s house most likely means reminiscences of their destroyed homes in the Volga Region, the graves of their relatives and their little children.

Leave and return, property and loss, life and death, past and future - all these elements are intrinsically tied to eachother and the petrified, ineradicable countenance of perpetuity is inherent in them.

Although more than 60 years have passed since then, even though Stalin passed away more than 50 years ago, the charges against the German people were only withdrawn in 1991; and the question about a possible restoration of their autonomy has not been ressolved to this day.

Instead of an epilogue

Dear great-grandmother, dear great-grandfather! Your children, my uncles and aunts made a clear choice with regard to their fatherland. Although I am Ukrainian from my mother’s side and German from my father’s side, I am neither able to speak Ukrainian nor German. Hence, I am a Ukrainian German, a Russian one!

As M.Chvanov wrote in his article “We – the Russians”, there is a certain phenomenon – all shrouded in mystery. Just like the mystery about our national character: we are strong due to our irrational intellectual power, our mind and moral; and in bad times we are used to help anybody, being even prepared to give someone the shirt off one’s back. Maybe, we are more than just a people? Maybe, this is the huge cross we are preordained to bear throughout history. Forgive me for using such expressions. Do not forget: again and again they have been displacing us from Russia, as if this spot had been elected for some other people. As if they knew, and maybe they factually knew, that we would not form any diaspora beyond Russia’s borders, but pass our blood, our intellect and our soul to other peoples: maybe, our children will not yet become Germans again, but our grandschildren will, and our great-grandchildren for sure. No matter what they are going to be, but they won’t be Russians”.

You predetermined my fatherland, my sex, just as you did with regard to my relatives living abroad. Where is the way that protects me from leaving, too. Or am I going to meet the same fate my ancestors met before?! Am I going to leave my fatherland just as they did?!

In all probability the belief of the eclesiasts will apply in this case. They say that generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again”.

Dear great-grandparents, you wereand will always be the source of our river, in which we find reminiscences of you and all the knowledge about the past.Our river has a distributory, which leads into another sea. I do not yet know, which direction my river is going to take; it depends on the behaviour of those, who might generate swirls or build a dam.

A thinking man experiences emotional distress, bears misery, which both might possibly even lead to the destruction of morality and which a superficial individual does not understand: just when he starts to think and muse about all the misfortune that troubles and agonizes mankind, without raising anybody’s hope for a turn for the better, he experiences unhappiness and dissatisfaction by the twist of fate which guides world order. Nevertheless, we must not disapprove prevision (although it predestinated a grievous way for us to follow), but consider its importance: we must not just lay the blame on this prevision, but also try to never lose sight of our own guilt, which might even be the one and only root of all our evil.
Kant

References and biographical references

I. Unpublished sources

1. Minusinsk Town Archive

• Fond P.-33.Executive Committee of the city council of the workers’ deputees.
  Index 1.

• Fond 1046.Executive Committee of the Minusinsk village council. Index 1.

II.Published sources

• History of the Russian germans in documents, 1763-1992. Book 1.,
  Moscow, 1993.

2.

• A) Central press. “Russian Newspaper” 1991, 1992, 1993.

• B) Regional press.”Krasnoyarsk Worker” 1994, 1995, 1996.

• C) District press “Banner of Work” 2003

3. Reference Books

• The Russian Germans. Scientific-informative bulletin, 2000.

• Russia’s Germans.Encyclopedia,1999.

Literatur

• • Schwebel, W. Views and opinions: Thoughts crossing one’smind in the 20th century. Translation from German. – Moscow: Republic, 1992, 240 pages, with illustrations.

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