Rosa Mikhailovna Levina, 9th term, 663660 Krasnoyarsk Territory. Irbey District, settlement of Stepanovka. Stepanovka School of General Education.
Scientific project leader: Viktor Jakovlevich Oberman.
2005.
During the Great Patriotic War 11 families of repressed Germans were deported to the settlement of Stepanovka: including their family members they were 49 individuals (About my countrymen, p. 57). Most of them were former inhabitants of the Volga-German Republic, whose deportation and resettlement were carried out on the basis of a ukase of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet dated 28 August 1941 “About the resettlement of all Germans from the Volga regions”. During the months of September and October 446480 Germans were displaced. By the end of the year 1942 they had deported 799459 Germans from these territories (The punished people, p. 100).
291 families, i.e. 1263 individuals were settled in new places in Irbey District (About my countrymen, p. 58). Among the deportees was the family of Aleksander Johannovich Leonhardt, his wife Lidia Filippovna and their children: Maria – born in 1930, Aleksander – born in 1931, Vladimir – born in 1935, Robert – born in 1939, Viktor – born in 1941. One of them, Robert Aleksandrovich, is my grandfather. Maria Aleksandrovna got married to the deported Jakob Karlovich Oberman. Further below I will try to give a more detailed explanation of my family tree. First of all, however, I am going to tell you about Jakob Karlovich, who has been living in our settlement for almost 60 years (see Annex 1).
J.K. Oberman was the son of a farmer who lived in Zaporozhe Region, Kuibyshev District, in the village of Miskoe. He was born on the 16 January 1926. Both parents worked for the kolkhoz. His father’s name was Karl Ivanovich. His mother, Emilia Petrovna, worked for the kindergarten. The parents were quite old, and Jakob Karlovich does not remember his grandparents at all. “In our family there were two daughters and two sons – Ivan and me. The grandparents had a lot of children. Mum’s husband died during the civil war, he fought for the Reds. Later she got married for the second time – to Karl Oberman. The daughters were by her first marriage, Ivan and I from her second husband – Karl Ivanovich. We were four of us . Later fate was to tear us apart”.
Jasha Oberman went to school in the neighbouring village. Learning came easy to him. Judging from the fact that he finished the 7 years’ school, his family obviously had the possibility to give him a good education. The lessons were held in German; the second language was Ukrainian. His mother tongue, however, was probably German, since most of the subjects were taught in this language. Thus, we may assume that they lived in a German village. Jakob’s sister, for example, was married to a khokhol (colloquial for “Ukrainian”; translator’s note), but all of them spoke German. The neighbouring settlements had numbers instead of names. The village grandfather Jasha lived in was No. 11, besides there were the villages No. 9, 10, 2, 6, 7, 8. There was no pioneer organization at school; at least Jakob Karlovich does not remember that there was any such organization. “A German farmer … in no way supports any kind of attempts to attract the young people of the village to become members of a pioneer group or the Young Communist League. The young people pointed their fingers at those, who took an active part in the pioneer movement” (The punished people, p. 30). It seemed that the State made allowances with regard to political questions of this kind, anxious to smooth down any conflicts that might occur, for the German population was not willing to take part in political life. Their family traditions were strongly developed, most of them were devout Christians. They preferred to work hard, in order to develop their farms and live in prosperity. Jakob and Yevgeniy Oberman, who was born in 1923, sat on the same school bench. We will talk about his fate further below. Yevgeniy was a boy of great artistic abilities. Later he was to become an art teacher and artist. Today he lives in Germany. As of 1939 all subjects were exclusively taught inRussian, althought there was German and Ukrainian teaching, as well. “It was very difficult to speak Ukrainian. Our teacher was a true-blue Ukrainian, and he held his lessons accordingly. In the very beginning we had considerable difficulties, but in the course of time, we made it after all.
Kuibyshev District was earlier called Luxemburg District, which leads me to assume that the villages there were German. Jakob Karlovich says that in the place he came from, every village had its specific number. And here, in Siberia, the different camp sub-sectors were numbered, too – No. 5, 7, 20 – this is how the called the branch camps, where they used to keep about 150-250 prisoners, who were all working for the timber industry. These numbers still exist nowadays: “Fifth”, “seventh”, “twentieth”. They are still being used in the vocabulary of fishermen, hunters, lumberjacks and inhabitants of the taiga today.
Yet before finishing school, Jasha Oberman took part in the ususal summer kolkhoz work. All children between 8 and 10 went to help the adults in the field to the best of their ability. “I recall the day, when the brigadier sent for me asking me to come to the field. My task was to rein up a couple of horses. I mounted on one of them and began to lead the horse, while the adults were sitting on a so-called “samoskidka”, a kind of reaping machine. It was a construction similar to the wings of a windmill, with rakes fastened to the ends. This machine was able to throw down ready sheats. I was very tired, my legs hurt and my bottom was all sore from sitting in the saddle for such a long time. When we stopped to take a rest, the brigadier sat down and began to smoke a cigarette, while I was thinking about what to do best,in order to get back home as soon as possible. I would have to fake illness, tell him that my belly was aching. Having used this trick, the brigadier, in fact, allowed me to go home. At that time I was 7 or 8 years old. And so we were working for the kolkhoz farm during the summer vacation year by year.
Village life had always demanded the participation of the children, not only during the period of collectivization, but principally at all times. What was the result of it? In one respect the adults were rendered effective assistance. On the other hand the children were taught to get accustomed to diligent work. Upon finishing the 7 years’ school, a boy was usually able to help his parents with a lot of things. And even though he disliked to get up early in themorning, he had to obey the brigadier, who went from door to door every morning to call upon the kolkhoz farmers, indicating that it was time to go to work. It cost Jasha quite some effort to follow fim to the field. Although he was tired and his hands and back were hurting, he was well aware of the fact that they did not like people to refuse or evade work. At home they: “Work is a must. It has to be done”. But his mother also never forgot to say a few words of praize to him. By the course of time the boy became hardened, tough and tenacious, learned how to evoke inside himself a feeling of responsibility and learned how to follow the promptings of his conscience. In his free time he played with his friends. Little by little Jakob Karlovich got accustomed to kolkhov work. Towards the year 1940, when he finished the 7 years’ school, he had a great way with horses, knew how to harness, unharness and take care of them. This knowledge later stood him in good stead, when the life of his family took a sudden, unexpected turn and he happened to get into an entirely new, harsh and, in my respects, tragic course of life. Indulgence and his love for work, which he had been taught from early childhood, were inherent in him all through his life. Today, at the age of almost 79, he is still working.
“After I had finished school, i.e. after the official lessons were over, I went there once again to pick up my school report. I had to walk about three kilometers to reach the school building. On my way, I had to pass by a field of sunflowers. There they were already using tractors of the KhTW (Kharkov Tractor Works) serious. Until then they used to do all the work by horse.
They asked me to join them. I started pulling out weeds. Well, when I was looking around, I saw a couple of girls coming near – they were my class-mates. They came running up towards the tractor I was sitting on. They handed over my school report to me, as well as a gift: a fountain-pen with real ink. Believe it or not – this meant a very great honour to me! And this was the beginning of my working life, too!” – Young Jakob used to sit on the trailor. They ploughed, seeded, cultivated plants and probably the young guy would never have thought of becoming a lumberjack in the future and of working for the timber industry for the rest of his life. But he will become an expert in this field, as well. In the autumn they entrusted a few horses to the young man. One of them was named “Gipsy”, the other one “Khilchenko”. By the aid of these two horses he had to to every kind of work. The tasks were set by the kolkhoz brigadier.
The peaceful work of the kolkhoz farmers was interrupted all of a sudden by the outbreak of the war. “In June 1941 the war broke out. In the village they were no longer allowed to turn on the light in the evening, although it was situated miles away from anywhere. There was no electricity. When the people needed light, the had to light kerosine lamps. Well, as from the 22 June about ten days passed by. Then, early in July, all people fit for work were rounded up. And once you were leading the life of a kolkhoz farmer, you have no choice, but go, where everybody goes – including us, the minors. We were loaded on huge, two-wheeled carts, which were otherwise used for transporting hay-sheaves. They took us to the river Dnep. As far as I remember the trip lasted for about 6-7 hours. There were a lot of people. They had not onlymobilized the inhabitants of our settlement, but all people living in the districts along the river banks, in order to have us dig out trenches. The ground there was rather level. As far as the eye could see – the whole area was swarming with people. The trench was about 3 meters deep, but on the side the tanks were expected to approach from, the gradient was about 7 meters (see Annex 2). The tank will drive in and then crash into the opposite wall, the obstacle. He cannot get out easily. However, witnesses from among the soldiers later reported that the tank drivers got used to such circumstances: they sent the first tank into the trench, let it be stuck in the wall, and then the ofollowing tanks would all roar over it. On the 18 September some military commissar arrived to reach out the call-up papers to those who were fit to fight at the front. My nephew, Yevgeniy Oberman, was called up, too. We never saw eachother again; 63 years passed by since that time. Everybody born until 1925 was called up and deported. I was born in 1926 and that is why they allowed me to stay with the trenches. Only very few people stayed there with me. And, of course, girls were in the majority. For some reason or other those being in charge had all left – dissolved into nothing. So all of us returned home early in October”.
This part of the memoirs proves that before the war many villages in the environs of Saporozhe had not yet been electrified. One can imagine how uncomfortable this circumstance must have been for the people of that time with regard to their daily life and the education of the teenagers. Although they had already built the Dnieproges (Dniepr Hydroelectric Power Station; translator’s note) in the Ukraine, electrification had not yet made its entrance to the rural areas. Even nowadays we sometimes have to make use of kerosine lamps, but it very rarely happens – only in case of a defective power line or if we have to switch off the light while a power pole is being under repair. Every time this happens, I feel this to be a great discomfort. And I think of the people who lived in former times without any electricity at all. How did they manage without? What did they do in long winter evenings? How did they succeed in doing the housekeeping early in the morning? It seems as if some natural, original community developed at those times And for the children who had to attend school, there was at least some little pleasure: there were a number of good reasons, why they could not learn their lessons and do their homework. Thus, you will find a kerosine lamp in every house even today or, if the worst comes to the worst, candles – as in former times. Many of us have a computer at home, and at school they make use of them, as well. Nonetheless, in each house, either in the pantry or somewhere in the storeroom, you will also find such an antediluvian lamp. Computers and kerosine lamps – what an interesting coexistence! Both, however, are badly needed!
Why did they not light fires in the countryside, when darkness set in? In his memoirs, Jakob Karlovich does not give any explanation on this, but I can well imagine the reason. Probably the people had to black out the windows at nighttime, for the front was coming nearer and nearer. Although there were no military objects in this part of the country, everybody tried his best to stick closely to the rules which were effective in times of war. During the time when the defensive installations were built, the workers, among them Jakob Oberman, lived in trenches. The trenches had been laid out in zigzags, and the people working there built themselves a kind of bomb shelter. They received food from the communal kitchen. Their work was controlled by soldiers. The entire environments were camouflaged, and in the gardens and woods militiamen stayed in hiding. They expected the people to work day and night. They made clear that everybody who tried to run away would be court-martialled. The younger people did not really understand, what kind of a court this was, but the situation was tense and the juvenils worked just as hard as the adults.
On the 3 October the inhabitants of Miskoe were informed that they would have to get ready to leave within 24 hours and without any ifs and buts. They were to be resettled (see Annex 3).
“We made all necessary preparations, even slaughtered a wild boar. The Ukrainians helped us to salt the bacon. We had never salted bacon before. We poured the salt directly into the linen bag, in which we intended to take the pork along. We also packed up some tried bread. On the 4 October a horse-drawn vehicle came to each house. We had to load our belongings. They allowed us nothing else but the bare necessities to take with us. We were forced to leave behind all our property. They handed us over an empty piece of paper, on which we could specify everything we had left behind. But the people did not avail themselves of this right. We were asked to get on the vehicles, and then they took us to Rozovka station situated about 12 kms from our village. We went in the company of brother Ivan, sisiter Olya (the elder) and her daughter Lida. In 1940, when mother died, our father was already quite old. At first he lived with us, but it was hard for us to satisfactorily taking care of him; so he finally decided to remove to his daughter’s place. Before they transported us on, we were all separated from each other and got on different waggons. On the 6th, early in the morning, the train started off. It was jammed with people. Most of them were Germans, but there were mixed families, as well, in which the husband, for example, was of German nationality, while his wife was Russian or Ukrainian – or the other way round. The were all deported together with their children.
We were transported in freight cars normally used for cattle. 120 individuals were crammed into each waggon. Everybody tried to sit or lie down on his bundle in a more or less comfortable position. At first, it was very hard for us to accept the new situation, but then we got used to it and somehow adjusted ourselves. During the train stops we stole away into other waggons in search of useful objects. We pulled out boards from the plank beds and succeeded in building a kind of a second storey in our waggon. This gave us more space. The youngsters climbed up onto the upper boards, while the older people stayed on the lower floor. Thus, the trip went on. There was nothing to eat. Only once, after we had already reached Siberia, they provided us with tea at some train station, and that was it. Whenever the train stopped, the people ran off to find themselves a place, where they could relieve nature. In the true sense of the word they ran in all directions. The train with all the repressed people was en route from the 6 October 1941 until the 6 November, when it finally arrived in Novosibirsk Region at the station of “Promyshlennaia”. The two brothers – Yasha and Vanya (15 and 16 years old), their sister Olga Zimmer (she was by the first marriage) and her little child had withstood the hard challenge of the trip, which had been full of privations. But they had managed to hold out to the end, until they reached Siberia. They had been on the way for a whole month. Nowadays the same trip will not take more than 2-3 days and nights. But at that time … At least we were lucky enough that the winter did not present itself in its entire harshness, although in November the inhabitants of Siberia usually have to cope with severe frost and heavy snowfall. On their way they had found and gathered a couple of bricks, and now, in the hour of need, they used them to light a campfire, to warm themselves and to boil water. In most cases they would cook a mixture of flour and water, which they then ate. It was their main food. “The German resettlers were to receive two warm meals plus 500 grs of bread per person and day” (The punished people, p. 119). In actual fact, however, they received nothing at all.
One of the waggons was occupied by soldiers, who guarded the deportees. But there were no specific or even increased controls, for there was nowhere to escape. Where should the prisoners hide away in such inhospitable districts? The people were utterly frightened. Already upon leaving the departure platform, they had heard the thunder of cannons. Apart from this nobody knew where they were taken to. Some had the opinion that they would take us to the south, but having reached Kharkov, the train suddenly turned towards the east. Now there was good reason to assume that they were deported to Siberia. En route weird scenes of horror were passing by: killed people, death bodies disfigured beyond recognition – they had charred after the bombing of the waggons or had been mutilated by other acts of violence. “You look out of the window and your gaze falls on a few rags and some female bones”. The bomb-wrecked waggons lay at the foot of a slope. It would happen that, during the train stops, minors would get out of the train to take a look at the site of the catastrophe, but the soldiers would not allow them to leave. The gave the immediate order to “stay and keep sitting in your waggon!” – Once they saw an entire train go up in flames. Another time a military aircraft was flying right over their heads. The present extract from his memoirs shows that the State resettled a whole people without taking further care of its individuals at all: these people lost everything they had acquired by hard work. Nobody explained to them, where they were taken to, and they were transported under extremely awful conditions.
At Promyshlennaia Station representatives of the kolkhoz farms received the newcomers. “They selected five families (ours was among them) and sent us on foot to a village called Svobodka, about 18 kms away from the train station. We set off on the 7 November – the whole area was deep in snow. Heavy snowfall had set in during the night. We did not have the right footwear, just our laced shoes. In the place we came from, nobody knew about feltboots. This is how Siberia welcomed us. We were lodged with an old woman, whose husband was fighting at the front. She had two sons, who were a little younger than I, about 12-13 years old. As soon as we appeared in the village, this event caused a crowd to gather. They looked at us, trying to find out whether we had horns. The young villagers had carefully listened to what the adults had told them; they now called us “fascists” and other insulting names. We had to go throw all this, had a lot to put up with”.
The scenario of receiving the Germans in Siberia was always the same. The Siberians came running out of their houses, in order to study the newcomers carefully. At first they showed a hostile attitude towards the exiles. There was a rather natural explanation for that – their country was at war against Germany, against the Germans; all their hatred towards the fascists was passed on to the Russian germans. And, as Jakob Karlovich says, this situation had to be seen through.
The woman who accomodated the teenaged Jasha, appeared to be a “little old woman” to him. In my opinion, however, she was just an adult woman, since she had two children and a husband fighting at the front. In their new place of residence the exiles had to go to work immediately. Just like in their native villages. Jasha was assigned to work for the kolkhoz farm. He was particularly familiar with horses. But there was quite a difference: at home, in Zaporozhe, they had never experienced such a cold winter. However, they were forced to survive under these harsh conditions. The brigadier assigned the newcomers to different kinds of work. Some were to transport firewood, others grain. In the spring I worked as a horse driver. I worked hard, never put my hands in my lap. Brother Ivan was working, too – and so did sister Olga … Everybody was aiming at one goal: “If only they would give us a crust of bread, a food ration”. They eked out a scanty living, lead a starvation existence. Thus, the years 1941 and 1942 passed by.
And then we were to accept a new challenge. Once, in September 1942, Jasha watched the brigadier stealing cereals from the store-room for personal use. The boy who was 17 years old at that time, went in and also stuffed about 1-2 kgs of grain between his breast and the clothes, firmly convinced that if the brigadier was allowed to do it, why should he not do it, either? Jasha committed this theft by necessity – to support his family with food. And this brigadier had nothing more urgent to do than sqealing on him to the militia. The matter became subject to criminal prosecution. The boy was served with a summons, but the head of the kolkhoz farm said that for the time being, there was no need to go there. Maybe, he was in need of the boy’s helping hands or was convinced that they would stop the legal proceedings against him, anyway. There was a resummons after some time, which he also ignored. But when they send the paper for the third time, the head of the kolkhoz farm sent Jakob to the militia. “It was the first day of the new year: Get ready, we have to go. Yes, he came to pick me up exactly on the 1 January 1943. We went on horseback for about 30 kms, then decided to spend the night. The following morning we travelled on, until we reached Podunskaia Station – yes, this is how the place was called. And this is where the trial took place. All the time this man had been telling me: you should not take it too much to heart; don’t be afraid, nothing will happen to you. Maybe, you just have to do some extra work on the kolkhoz farm. And so I stopped worrying about the future. The trial was on the 2 January. And that was it! They left me with the village Soviet and I made myself comfortable on a pair of chairs standing beside the oven.
Not a soul was there, but it would not have occurred to me to run away, either. Where could I have gone to, after all? There was no way out of the situation. Around 8 o’clock a woman came into the room. She asked me to get ready, because we were going to leave. Well, and then we went to Promyshlennaia Station, right to the remand prison, where I spent one night.
The following day the transferred me to the prison in Novosibirsk. I was kept there for almost two months. On the 25 February they sent me to Gornaia Shoria by a prisoner transport. There was a camp, a true camp – and what a camp it was! (Annotation 4, point 18). The people were transported on and on and on … They died … Everybody is thinking of the war, nobody is taking care of the poor prisoners? We ate wild garlic. We mashed the leaves of turnips in huge vats trying to feed the people with them. Half of them died – we had to leave them behind … We were forced to work for a stone pit. By day, during the lunch break, we used to blow the rocks up; the people hid out, ran for cover, and the shot firers did their job. Afterwards we had to load the pieces of rock on a belt conveyor, which transported them further into forthcoming lorries. And then we were to crack the rocks into small pieces no bigger than 5 cm in size. This work was done by means of sledge hammers. It was autumn, it was raining the whole day, and we were cracking stones. When we returned to our baracks in the evening we were all soaking wet. We had no blankets, no cushions. Everything you had on served as your bedding at nighttime. A shabby sweater, a jacket tailored like a seaman’s jacket, a pair of laced shoes – that was all they had distributed to us. These shoes had a nickname. They were called “ChTS” (which is short for Chelyabinsk Tractor Works; translator’s note). Before going to sleep, we put the shoes under our head and the seaman’s jacket on top, … and this is how we slept … ChTS – this is a special kind of shoes with soles made of old rubber tyres – and on the top side there was rubber, too. I got a cold, became very sick. I almost met my maker. But I survived. They took me to the ward, the doctor succeeded to restore me to health”.
In this part of the memoirs we find a very interesting detail: the head of the kolkoz farm only decides to take Oberman to the court-house after delivery of the third summons. How could that happen? The country was at war after all and there was military discipline all around. Obviously, the had of the kolkhoz was already conversant in such matters – it probably was not his first Jakob, his first German kolkhoz worker who was asked to appear before the court. He knew for sure that they would not hold someone to account, until he had been summoned for the third time. Thus, he gave the young fellow the opportunity to escape prison for at least a certain time, while he could make use of his strong, young, working hands for a few months more. We furthermore learn, how “well” they used to feed the prisoners in the camp and where they assigned them to doing forced labour. They did not only have to work for the timber industry, which I learned from our local history, but were also utilized to do hardest work in stone pits. My attention was attracted by the ChTS, and I decided to ask my history teacher for more information. This abbreviation, in fact, means Chelyabinsk Tractor Works. But why did the prisoners call their shoes this name? Maybe, because they could walk with them through the mud just like a tractor? Or because they were sort of “all-terrain” shoes?
It is really surprising, how people even in utterly desperate situations were able to think of such rather joking expressions. It means that they remained human bengs after all, who were yet strong enough to banter about something.
Thus, two years went by. Jakob Oberman is almost nineteen years old. On the 2 January 1945 he is to be released from the camp. Jasha is waiting. He expects to be called to the KVCh (Culture and Education Section; translator’s note) soon, where they will certainly deliver this great news to him. But nobody came for him. Finally, he decided to go there on his own authority, in order to find out the actual state of affairs. The reply was a staggering one: you are going to stay here until further notice. Jakob was, of course, confused and annoyed – he had served his sentence after all, and now they did not allow him to leave. He was compelled to wait for the final decision about his fate until the 25 April 1945 - almost four months. Another two men and two women also had to stay “until further notice”. Then they receieved the order: go and get ready. You are leaving for Kansk! – “And we understood that we had to follow the order: they assigned us to a predetermined place, and we were to go. We had no choice” (see Annex 3).
“On the 1 May, early in the morning, we left for Kansk. it was a sunny day. Having reached Kansk, we recognized a huge transit zone. Well, I thought: they probably intend to punish you once again. We were registered. The devil only knows, what kind of details they put down on the paper. When they had finished with their paperwork they said: “Come along then!” – We left the transit section. Somebody pointed at a small cottage situated not far from the camp zone. “Go over there – come on! That’s the place where your comrades of the labour army live”.
“The trud army (labour army) was a specific system of the workers’ front ( there were units, gangs, brigades), unifying all basic elements of military organisation, typical structures of a camp regime and industrial production activities (The punished people, p. 123)”.
“Well, we went there and received the necessary implements. As of the 3 May 1945 I worked for the labour army (Annotation 5a). The life of a labour armist took its course. We lived inside the camp zone, which was surrounded by barbed wire fences and observed by armed guards. I stayed in Kansk till the month of August; until July I worked as a stablehand. Then they were looking for workers for the rafting of wood. They sent me to Strelka, Irbey District.
They want us to clear away timber. From Strelka our gang slowly moves forward - until we have reached the mouth of the river Kungus. This happened in August. Clear away timber means take away logs that lie about in the river bed or along the embankment, push them into the water and float them with the current. Thus, we made about 20 kms. One day Daniil Ivanovich Vinnik arrived. He was a master coming from Stepanovsk Forest District. A certain Konrad Funk was with him. They came on horse-back. They selected four of us. I was among them. They were looking for men who had already gained practical experience from working in the woods. We departed the next morning. Vinnik found himself a space on the cart , while the others went on foot. But having reached the hill, we also decided to better sit in the cart, the more since we had only taken very few belongings with us! We went up to Strelka, then continued our trip to Agul, Minushka, Galunka, Romanovka Stariki, Sobolevka (see Annex 5). We made the whole trip within a day. In August the days are long. In Sobolevka, not far from the mountain, we put up our bivouacs. Except for Vinnik who took the horses and drove on. We racked our brains wondering were he might spent the night. He forded the little river and then betook himself directly to Stepanovka. In Sobolevka there were no houses any more. Here and there one would notice a couple of posts, fences … We lit a camp fire and had our evening meal taking potluck. The posts near the embankment were all broken; we used them for our fire. When we awoke in the morning we thought: what next? For this was an entirely new place for us. Only Konrad had been here before. He showed us the way to Stepanovka. The weather was fine. We picked berries and listened to Vinnik, who was singing a song. Daniil Ivanovich was approaching us by boat. As soon as he had reached the embankment, we stowed our luggage. Konrad took the rudder, and Vinnik stayed with him in the boat. The others went on foot, following the trail. We went on and on and on. Then we saw the first house. There was no one to be seen anywhere. All we saw were rather tall tree-stumps. In the far distance there was a road – this was where the rural area began”.
This way Jakob Karlovich finally reached the village of Stepanovka, where he has now been living with his family for almost 60 years. And he still enjoys work. He neither finished any vocational school nor did he take any courses, but he knows how to work. In his native village he acquired specialized knowledge in agriculture, in the camp he learned how to handle a sledge-hammer. He learned how to float wood, fell trees and a lot more. And it was always hard physical work.
As from 1945 the deportees were not subject to any particular control anymore. However, they were obliged to register once in a month, sometimes less often (depending on the respective circumstances and conditions), with the commandant’s office, I.e. they had to sign a paper thus confirming that they had not left the place. Nobody had the right to remove himself beyond the district limits. “The special resettlers are not allowed to leave these areas without the express permittion of the NKVD Special Commandant. They are obliged to stay within the districts of their housing estates … they are furthermore obliged to prenotify the commandant three days prior to any changes regarding the number of family members … (Corpus juris, collection of normative acts of law, Moscow, 1993, p. 113). Such restrictions infringed upon the rights of the citizens, but there was no way out, they had to comply. The displaced persons were now half-free: they worked without being guarded all the time, it was up to them to either work hard or stay half-hungry, they could let their minds wander and move about freely between the different work objects.
Their main task was to float wood. “We did this until late in automn, and during the summer we constructed dams and weirs (hydraulic technical structures such as earth walls, p. 310, New Encyclopedic Dictionary, Moscow, 2002, NEW). The destroyed remainders of the damns can still be seen along the river today.
They were built in order to hinder the logs and other pieces of wood from drifting into creeks and plain tracts at high water. This had often happened before. The logs would drift apart and then had to be pulled out of the water separately. But the new system proved its worth. Later everybody said that this had been a really good idea. The construction of the dams was supervised by the boss of the camp branch; they had their own chief engineers and master builders. The whole work was done by hand. Axe and saw were the most important tools”.
It strucks us right away that Jakob Karlovich talks about production matters more precisely than about everyday life, his personal concerns and specific interests… . His parents instilled the habit of doing a good job into him. They brought him up to work hard, and this attribute is deeply rooted in his conscience from early childhood. Being a Russian-German he was used to toing everything punctually and with utmost accuracy. Late, he was forced to work under entirely new conditions, and accepted to learn everything about the rafting of logs. And he learned about how to build dams. In fact, they did it this way: based on a detailed analysis of the preceding log rafting results, a plan was developed for the districts to be fortified. During the winter they put up “horses” (timber trestles) on the ice – a log up to 5 meteres in length on two legs. They hacked hollows into the ice, fixed the legs into them, so that they would reach the bed of the river. Thus, the stability of the trestles was guaranteed. The distance between them came to 3-5 meters. Every now and then, when the water pressure was too high, they had to additionally put props between the trestles. These were posts made of willow rods, about 2-3 meters in length. At the bottom they were pointed, until they got a triangular shape. But why did they have three edges only instead of four? My interlocutor explained to me that a post with three edges does not losen as easily as a post with four. He told me that it does not start to shake or slip out of its position or even out of the hollows, when the river froze up and then thawed again in late spring. Afterwards, the log drivers put in bushes perpendicular to the river bed. They were 3-4 meters in height and almost covered the entire embankment. he bushes were wrapped up with rods and then interconnected with wire. This artifical construction would slowly fall down to the embankment, as soon as the ice began to thaw. Sand an garbage, all mixed with mud, got caught in it. Prssed down by the bushes it turned into an obstacle for the driving logs: they bumped against the dam and then continued their way by following the riverbed. By the way, on the occasion of this conversation I also became familiar with another intersting self-made construction, called “baba” or “babka” (pile driver; translator’s note). They used it to drive inposts (a block of wood to knock in piles. New Encyclopedic Dictionary, p. 82). A “baba” was made of a sunk log, which had become saturated with water. In most cases this was larch wood which, after having remained in water for a long time, was very firm and heavy. The men used to sew a small block off the log, so that four people were still able to take it up, and then vertically hammered in four metal cramps (see Annex 6). By command of the brigadier the “babka” was lifted and dropped on the post. This action needed perfect timing. Nobody was allowed to have his own way. Nobody was allowed to hide away behind his comrades’ back. Thus, the log drivers took joint action during their work, fulfilling the planned target, although they received utterly frugal rations … And the dams? They were not failing for more than ten years. Due to their existence the driving speed of the logs increased. Duting the years yet to follow, this meant a considerable facilitation of work. Moreover the dams, which had been built a little further upstream from the village, protected the area from flooding at times when the river was swollen in flood. Jakob Karlovich did the job of a log driver from 1945 till 1953. Torn away from his native soil, the Ukraine, by the force of destiny, or – strictly speaking – by the government decree, he was thrown into the expanses of Siberia, but knew how to get accustomed to the rough climate, acquire the abilities of a lumberjack and log driver, get settled to his new surroundings, the work collective, experience the particularities of the Siberian character and acquire the Russian language … From documents preserved I noticed the beautiful handwriting of my heroe. Another interesting thing is that his memoirs contain swearwords, which sometimes “just slipped out”, words like “sh…” or “ar…”. This, however, was a rare thing with him. Having become a true Siberian, he also adopted a very specific part of the Siberian colloquial speech – these very typical, sometimes even rather obscene curses, which, of course, was rarely the case. Even nowadays there are men and women in our place, who, every now and then, curse true-blue swear-words .
Let us come back to the log drivers. “On the river you can’t make high speed. For that reason we had to build a floating barrack, which we then used to travel and live in (see Annex 7). The barrack was built outside the water during the winter. It was about 20 meters in length and 17 meters in width. At first we constructed a raft from debarked pinetrees. In order to be able to connect them, we sewed and hacked out indentations, which tapered off towards the end. The workers drove special plugs into these dents. They were made from spruce, for this species of timber is not that brittle and fragile and cannot be so easily damaged by wetness. They carved out suitable pieces of wood, cut them to size, adjusted them and hammered them in. My comrade Neu and I went to look for spruce, which was very appropriated for this purpose. The plugs were sharpened at the bottom and at the sides – similar to a trapezium. Thus, they looked like wedges, which would not allow the logs to drift apart. In order to knock the plugs properly in, the workers used to put up a trestle and hang a “baba” on it, which was made of the rootstock of a larch of about 1 meter in length. Afterwards they shook it violently and hammered at the plugs. This is how they got the plus properly in. There were 15 of them altogether, and they were hammered in about 2 meters apart from eachother. Then we laid the so-called foundations on top of the raft – diametrically. We put the flooring plamks on top, put up a supporting framework, which was also made of planks, and then constructed the walls and the roof from boards. Inside there were two-storeyed plank beds on each side of the barrack. At the front side and in the rear there were doors, two doors. And there was also enough space for the rowing device. We hacked wedge-shaped indentations into one of the crossbeams and placed the rudders into them – two in the front and two in the back. While we were pushing the barrack into the water, two men were at the helm. In case the current was very quick and they feared that the barrack might be caught in a whirlpool, some more men were needed to navigate the float, which was pushed into the water by the aid of heavers. They placed two logs below, and upon the command “one – two – one – two”, - they started to push by hand. When the float is on the water and you see logs drifting ahead, they have to be cleared away immediately. But everybody else available was to assist the helmsman. From time to time it would happen that we stroke the sands, and then we had to see that we pushed the raft into the open water again. One time, in Stariki, we were fast aground. After all the drifting logs and smaller pieces of woof had passed by, the water pressure became less and the water level went down all of a sudden. In the evening, a little further downstream, we had still been floating in quite a high speed, and the next morning we found ourselves on this very sandbank. We had not expected something like that to happen. There we eight of us. The evening before, we had found a kind of a hawser, as well as a wooden rope winch (very simple device to lift loads; consisting of a hand-driven cable drum and reeled up ropes or chains. New Encyclopedic Dictionary, p. 211). It was something like a chock with holes in it; we put sticks into them (see Annex 6). Then we started heaving the winch, the hawser was rolling up and we were able to pull the raft off the sands. The rest of the men helped from the other side by means of the heaver.
In each barrack there was a cast-iron oven, as you can still find them in rural areas nowadays. There were no tables. Everybody had his meal sitting on his plank bed. One of the barracks served as a kitchen. There they even had a petroleum lamp and a store-room for foodstuffs. Half of the barrack was occupied by the camp commandants. There were three or four barracks in all and about 300 people acoomodated in them. In 1945 they were keeping girls in this area as weel – Germans, who were also working in brigades. Both – men and women – used to work as lumberjacks. And the women also drifted logs – just as we did, but they did this work without wearing shoes. Their boots were their bare feet. The camp authorities put laced shoes at our disposal, Japanese shoes made of crude pigskin. They were “s.h..” (second-hand, already used; transl. note); we had received them from the Japanese. They gave them to us, the fools, and we went around in them. While we were having our lunch, they would slightly dry, and, after having taken our meal, we set off to work again”.
This is how Jakob Karlovich’s work routine was like. A floating barrack, this Siberian invention, attracts a certain attention. Throughout half of the year it was the log drivers’ home, after all, where all common life took place. In these very surroundings the people created for themselves a minimum of life-style and more or less tolerable working conditions. They disposed of plank beds, an oven, a kitchen … But having to drift logs for a period of 8 years … and exclusively living in a floating barrack half of that time – is a little bit like camp life, although there were no guards. There were not only Germans in this place, but also Russians, Ukrainians, Moldavians, Lithuanians … In the present story, an ancient, very useful device is being mentioned – the “baba”, which means that there was no mechanization at all. There were no engine-driven boats, no trawlers and tractors, not even a single saw driven by a petroleum engine – everything had to be done by hand and by means of simplest devices. They were to drift hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of timber. In 1948, for instance, they managed to prepare 300.000 cubic meters of logs for drifting. There is a very impressive report about the utilization of women for the rafting of timber. The state did not even spare its women, who had been glorified and singled out in praise for their works of literature and art in the 19th century. In the 20th century women made the revolution, took part in the war and … drove logs. This is the way it was. A very interesting fact is the use of Japanese shoes. From this fact we may draw the conclusion that own footwear was not available in an adequate quantity. But where did these shoes come from? Presumably, the laced shoes were part of the captured material the Russians had taken with them after Japan’s annihilation in 1945. Thus, they came at just the right time to suit our raftsmen. Only recently I learned about the meaning of “s.h.” – used, second-hand, mustered out -, when they connected up mustered out computer monitors at school.
Until now Jakob Karlovich has not told us anything about the attitude of the state towards him and his comrades. He has not yet given any hints about the relations between the different nationalities, either. There were a lot of Germans in this place, after all. They went on well with eachother, not disposing of any time to think about national problems. They all had to work. To converse in their mother tongue was sort of inappropriate. What would the others think of them? To sing German songs – another stumbling block; the others would not understand what they were about. For that reason they spoke Russian, but within the family they went back to communicate in their mother tongue.
In order to be able to do such a hard physical labour, it was most essential to feed oneself with healthy food in sufficient quantities. What did the raftsmen subsist on? In the kitchen their stood a huge pot. Having received their bread ration, they started to cook this typical watery soup. They were already fed up with eating porridge all the time. They decided to cook some kind of an oat soup – consisting of oat grits or grains – common ones, as you find them in every house. “Of course, we had no fat available. You fulfilled the norm and got your ration. The quantity of food depended on the percentage of the quota fulfilled. I do not remember, how much bread they gave you for which percentage. 950 or, maybe, 750 grs of bread, I guess. In the canteeen they used to cook potatoes. Every now and then they distribued fish; I cannot recall having eaten meat at that time. Sometimes, mice happened to get into the pot.
Once they appointed me cook of our brigade. That was in 1946. They had found themselves somebody to cook their meals! I always tried my best to keep the pot clean. As soon as everybody had finished his meal, I immediately carried the pot to the water and quickly scoured it clean. Well, they had asked me to cook. I did not really want to do that job. Told them: What kind of a cook, you think, I am? Well, alright then! But where am I supposed to prepare the eals? We dug out a hole, so that the huge cast-iron pot would fit into it. Our fireplace was right on the ground. Towards the evening we had to prepare dinner and light a fire. Having got everything ready, I was just to throw the grains into the boiling water. The pot was covered by a lid. But nevertheless, such a little “germ”, such a little creature managed to find its way into it. There was no electricity. We only disposed of matches and chips of wood to light the scene. Unfortunately, we had almost run out of matches at that time. In the morning, when I expected the lads – one, two, three …. to approach to take their breakfast, I reached for the ladle intending to serve up the soup. I take a glance at the broth – something dark is floating on the surface. I look around – nobody is in sight yet. And, in a split second, ) take the mouse out by means of the ladle and throw it apart. Only many years later I told this story to my friends. Nobody died from this meal. It was just a little mouse, which had dared to climb into the pot. Well, such things would happen”.
Jakob Karlovich mentioned that they were given some watery soup (“balanda”). Obviously, this soup was not tasty at all. I did not find any explanation for this balanda” in the dictionary.
From time to time Jakob had to go more than 10 kms on foot, in order to fetch bread. In Stepanovka there was a bakehouse. When he returned, he stowed the bread away on the raft in some raised place, and then they would continue their trip, until they had reached their barrack again. He rolls up his trouser legs and walks into the water, helps the lads to steer the raft. He deliveres the bread. On the banks several rafts were always ready at one time to supply foodstuffs. Jakob Karlovich supposes that, in spite of all the difficulties, this kind of labour hardened his organism. He has no reason to complain about the condition of his legs so far. Let us devote our attention to the word “khloptsy” (lads, boys; translator’s note). It is a typical Ukrainian expression, which he uses quite often. Evidently, the influence of the Ukrainian language left certain traces on his mind.
“We were driving logs, until we finally reached the town of Kansk. We followed the course of the rivers Kungus, Agul and Kan. The whole trip covered a distance of 100 km. Today, our former raftsman likes to walk along the banks or tramp through the woods. He turns his mind back to the time, when he was a young man, recalls the long days full of hard labour, remembers his friends. He looks at the river. A lot of water has flown by, many years have passed by since then, but he will always remember how the workers, faint with hunger, set out to gather wild garlic, as soon as they had noticed the very first plants turning green. And in the evening, after they had summed up the results of the past work-day, those who had done a particlarly good job, were honoured by big bunches of this wild garlic. Often, one or two fishermen would receive such a reward, and then theothers were even invited to taste the fresh-made fish soup. From time to time a goat would break its legs when jumping over the logs, which were lying scattered all about. In such cases the brigadier allowed them to share the meat in addition to their usual ration. This extra food helped the raftsmen to overcome hunger. According to Jakob Karlovich’s statement, they used to eat the meat instead of bread.
Although, under the law, “working conditions and payment of wages for the deportees were to be equal to those of the local residents, reality looked entirely different. The special resettlers were forced to work until they were “worn and torn” (The punished people, p. 108). They received less wages. Calculation errors and fraud were committed on purpose. Moreover, 10% of the wages were kept back by the NKVD.
In 1948 the timber rafting season went on for a prolonged period of time, for autumn set in later than usual. A mix of snow and ice was floating on the water surface. But this did not make any difference in the life of the raftsmen. They scampered through the ice-cold water and went on driving logs. Every now and then, the floating barrack would freeze in the sheets of ice. In such cases they had to chisel the frozen timber out, and then continue their way, until the riverbed had completely frozen up. In such situations they would light a camp fire on the bank and work no longer than 10 minutes, before they once again warmed themselves up at the fire, had a mouthful of schnaps and – went back into the water. That very year all resettlers were handed out a certificate, when they went to check and get registered with the special commandant’s office. Jakob Karlovich had to sign the paper, although he did not pay any attention to what was written there. He says that he had been forced to sign so many papers before, that he did not pay regard to this one anymore. The document said: “I, the resettler Jakob Karlovich Oberman, born in 1926, resident in the settlement of Stepanovka, Irbei District, Krasnoyarsk Territory, herewith take cognizance of the Ukase of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet dated 26.11.1948, which attests that I was sent into internal exile for life, without having the right to return to my previous place of residence, and that I will be sentenced to 20 years of forced labour, should I try to leave (escape) the place of compulsory settlement without having received the official permission”. (Annex 8). Beneath there were the signatures of Jakob Karlovich and the NKVD representative in charge. The ukase itself is titled: “About the criminal prosecution of individuals resettled to remote districts of the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War, who attempt to escape from the places of their compulsory settlement”. Here is an extract from the ukase: “In order to intensify the regime to the deportees … (reference is made to specific nationalities, wherby Germans are also mentioned) … and due to the fact that they have not received any information about the term of their exile before or during the resettlement process, … their exile is herewith assessed … for life. Upon unauthorized leaving of the place of internal exile (escape) … the guilty person is subject to criminal prosecution. He will be called to account accordingly”. Degree of penalty: 20 years forced labour (Collection of acts of law and corpus of legislation, p. 124).
When the powers intended to tighten the “regime of resettlement”, it means that a certain discontentment had spread among the exiles, who were already eagerly awaiting for their release. Having not been informed about the exact term of exile before, they were now confronted with the plain truth. Clear and brief it was retroactively determined that they should stay “for ever”. Punishment by menas of forced labour was to suppress the striving and the desire of the people for freedom. In fact, the number of attempts to escape decreased by 3,5 times, after the Ukase had been passed. (The punished people, p. 104). In 1948 and 1949 all special resettlers within the USSR were registered once again. During the process of registration the deportees had to weather through a number of humiliations again. There fingerprints and special pictures were taken (Annex 9). The officers noted an exact description of their outward appearance and possible specific marks. That is to say: they adopted an attitude towards the resettlers, as if they were criminals. In the course of the new registration process a new file was opened on Jakob Karlovich; he had to fill in a questionnaire,containing all personal data and a kind of autobiography (Annex 10,11, 5a). This personal file was transferred to the Archive of the Administration of interior Affairs of Krasnoyarsk Territory in 1956, after the restrictions had been abolished (Annex 12). The deported Germans lost the right to ever returning to their native places. And, in fact, there was no reason for them to go back. Other people had settled in these places, on their property, since long. In actual fact, Jakob Karlovich did not have the intention to leave for any other place to live in. With utmost dignity he accepted his fate, tried to make himself at home, concentrated all his energy on the unknown future, tackled all problems and immediately started to write “A clean copy of life”. In the 1950s and 1960s he and his wife made two or three trips to Alma-Ata to visit his sister Olga and his brother Ivan … But basically his life happens in the taiga. He decided to stay in this place for ever – in accordance with the official order. He managed to endure all strokes of fate and was not broken down by all the grief. He bore up and brought up his children together with his wife. And he always sets a high value to leading a life in self-respect, for human dignity is inviolable.
In 1951 the authorities organized a camp in Stepanovka. There prisoners worked in brigades; they had to fell trees.
“We used to drive logs up to Stepanovka, but some raftsmen accompanied the floating wood even further. We were not subordinate to the camp regime, but belonged to the field of responsbility of the MVD (Ministry of internal Affairs; translator’s note). The administration was one and the same. The chief of the camp passed his instructions to the foreman, and then the raftsmen did their job. As long as the camps were situated further upstream, the prisoners would clear away the timber up to the mouth of the river Igil, and then we took charge of the log driving procedure. In case they were unable to manage their job by themselves – which could easily happen on small rivers – then we were sent there to provide assistance. In 1953, the year of the amnesty, we at first drove logs from Belousov Kliuch upstream the river Ambarchik to Igil, until we finally reached the mouth of the Kuzho. We made a request to the camp authorities hoping to get the permission to go home. Once again we had to pack up foodstuffs and our belongings. Then we changed our clothes and set off, further upstream. It took a whole day, until we finally reached the village of Ambarchik. We crossed the river, reached Igil and then walked on through the mountains up to Ust Kuzho. There was a camp (Annex 5). We managed to get there within a day. We did our usual job, drifting logs until September 23. On this very day they came forward with the proposal to assign me the duties of a planner. David Subbotin was the camp commandant at that time. He had no objections, and thus Krapivin, who was the responsible engineer for the rafting of timber, engaged me for this new job. I was working as a norm planner until 1957, when the camp in Stepanovka shut down.
Thus, J.K. Oberman dedicated 8 years of his life to the rafting of timber. If we would add up all the routes he did by raft or on foot, the total of all distances would make more than 1000 kms. He went through a hard lot, he managed to bear all kinds of misery. He acquired the complete knowledge of forest operation and rafting. He learned how to jump over scattered logs with ease, how to handle an axe. He learned how to build “zapani” (Certain places in the water bordered by floating devices, which help to keep back, store and sort logs and other pieces of wood on the water surface. New Encyclopedic Dictionary, p. 394). He was a master in handling the quant (pole with a metal hook. Explanatory Dictionary, p. 31). He also learned to handle a “kantovka” – a short pole with a tapering off end. You need it to push or roll thick logs from the embankment into the water (Annex 6). He had to built “zapani” until he finally went on pension. The appointed him the one and only responsible person for this special task, although there were other raftsmen around, who would have been able to build constructions of that kind. Jakob Karlovich, however, was assigned foreman, because he was the most reliable, thorough and careful man among the brigade workers. They all knew very well that he would never deviate a single centimeter from the fixed standard. When he did his job, it meant that the whole construction, the whole device would, fore sure, withstand the pressure of water and timber. For he did not only bring in all his manual skill but was heart and soul in his work. A well-done job gave him great pleasure himself. Stiring for good work is one of his chief characteristics. He did not just pass his working hours, but tackled his tasks in a rather creative way, something like … applied art. Many even today draw special attention to the time, when they were working with Jakob Karlovich, for they were deeply impressed by his exemplary, excellent work. They like to cite examples mentioning his attitude towards work, which was and is worthy of imitation: start work in good time, adhere to the 10 minutes lasting stop for a smoke, go to lunch punctually, have dinner at the fixed time and finish work at ten to four or ten to five …
During the time when he was working as a raftsman, Jakob Oberman came to knew Maria Leonhard, who had been deported from the Volga-German ASSR. She was working in the raftsmen’s barrack for the kitchen. Her father, my great-grandfather, was a raftsman, too. In 1949 the young couple founded a family. There was no place for them to live in. But on the riverbank there stood a little hut. It was unoccupied and they received the permission to pull it down and build themselves a new little house in this place or somewhere else. And this is exactly what they did: they took all the logs and planks, drove them downstream up to the village, where they assempled the parts once again. This is how they got their own little house. Three children were born. Step by step the master of the house built three extensions. They have been living in this place until today. He never ever demanded anything from the state, never committed a theft. He lived by the wotk of his own hands, he does all the repairing himself and keeps everything in good order.
In 1955 the Russian-Germans were entitled to chose the place of their permanent residence within the region, within the republic themselves. This right, however, was not applicable to those, who had a responsible job for the benefit of the public. It was now determined that they should be obliged to personally register with the MVD organs once a year. The existing punitive measures applying to violations of the camp regime were abolished. The most important tasks now was the intensification of political indoctrination among the special resettlers. Apart from this, the people could now be encouraged to work harder, in order to become distinguished for having obtained good labour results. The authorities began to give back a few rights to the Germans. Nevertheless, they were strictly prohibited to return to their former native villages or towns. They did not receive any compensation for the property they had to leave behind at the moment of their deportation, either. The new legislation did not affect Jakob Oberman’s family. He was already growing up two children, kept a cow, pigs and some small livestock. It would not have been easy to leave this place, even in case they had decided to just remove to a place somewhere within the region. This, he left things as they were, the more since the Germans were not accustomed to abruptly break the pillars and corner stones of their life. “Most of the deported Germans and Calmucks exercised themselves in silent patience and resigned. The Germans did not even go out of their way to finally get released from special resettlement, they did not display much activity in order to reach this aim” (The punished people. p. 112). Jakob Karlovich went along with this situation, too, waiting patiently for the things to come.
In 1964 the Germans were rehabilitated. In 1972 the restrictions regarding a free choice of their place of residence were lifted. On the basis of the Decree of the Presidium of The USSR Supreme Soviet dated the 13th December 1955, J.K. Oberman was reeased from special resettlement on the 31st January 1956 (Annex 12).
In 1957, after the liquidation of the camp, they opened a timber supply section in Stepanovka. The responsibility for the garage was placed to the new station, the barracks were occupied by lumberjacks and the former buildings of the onsite security forces now served as a schoool. All camp objects were now utilized byr the new enterprise. And Jakob Karlovich went on to appropriate some new professions: beside his numeracy skills as a normer, he soon had a good command of the tasks of a wood cutter, lumberjack, brigadier, production controller and loader. Life taught him to become familiar with the woods.
“I remember Yegorov, the boss of the rafting district. He new all our raftsmen very well. The villages of Minushka, Galunka, Stariki and Stepanovka belonged to the Kungussk District. At that time Yegorov was working not far from Kansk – in Lobanovo (Annex 5). He arrived on the 16th August 1957 and proposed to drive the logs out of the “zapany”, which would take about one month’s time. My permission to stay away from my place of residence had to be prolonged for job-related reasons. The “khloptsy” (fellows; translator’s note) said: “You must go! You are able to read and write. You know best, how this kind of work is being done. I did not want to, but I understood that someone would have to leave and do it. So I went to see the commandant, checked with the office and got registered. The commandant’s office was in Kansk. They had the right to know, who you were, in order to be able to check at any time that you had not tried to escape, should they seize you by accident”. An then J. Oberman, assigned to work in a different place, told us about the difficulties to get to Kansk: either on foot – and then you would have to spend the night in some haystick or barn, or you were lucky enough to share a ride on some driving past vehicle. In short, you would not learn the geography of the villages and settlements situated on the riverbanks from books, but by the aid of your legs. Until today he can clearly recall this. It was a very fortunate fact that the raftsmen had their special little cottage, where, during their journeys through, they would warm themselves up, stay overnight and eat a piece of bread, in order to continue their “trip” the following morning. On the occasion of such marches, when Jakob Karlovich was all alone with his thoughts, he reflected on the adversities of fate. Why had life just taken this course? When he was 14 years old, he lost his mother. Soon after his father died. Why did he end up in Siberia by such a stroke of fate? Was there anything to be done about? Why had they< deported thousands of people there? He arrived at the conclusion that the upshot was only logical. He asked himself: am I doing right to live and behave this way? And he replied to himself: there was no way out, anyway. One had to submit oneself, one had to do one’s work. He never evaded labour – it was a means to ease his mind.; it would take people’s mind off their worries. He came to the conclusion that, since circumstances had developed into this very direction, he had no choice but submit himself – that’s the way it was. He was aware of the fact that the state treated them badly, that they were bearing the stamp of political unreliability. But he managed to set his mind at rest thinking that it was not only the Germans who had been deported, but other peoples, as well.
Well then, there was no other way left but stay a human being even under such difficult circumstances, and try not to be a disgrace among one’s friends , comrades and countrymen.
He always had good friends in the past and he has good friends today, too. There is Aleksander Karlovich Schneider, for instance, who also has three children. As far as his job situation was concerned, he always filled an executive position which, however, had no influenece on this friendship, at all. Early in the 1970s he left for Usbekistan, then removed to Ulyanovsk Region and finally emigrated to Germany. He is busily writing letters from there and, every now and then, even visits his friend. Konrad (Kondrat) Funk set off for Kemerovo Region, where his daughter lives. He did not leave her in the lurch, but helps her in many things as best he can. And then he comes to see his friend. There were Neu, Gaas (Haas), Schmidt and others, too. He also has a number of comrades among the local residents. This friendship and the willingness of supporting eachother helped Jakob Karlovich to endure life in Siberia. On the other side he, the former victim of reprisals, tried to express another thought yet, according to the words of his son. Without justifying Stalin, his behaviour and deeds at all, Jakob Oberman is of the opinion that without such a strict order “our people would not have achieved as much as it actually did”. What does he mean by that? He thinks that among our workers prevails the erroneous view that one should work less but receive more money, have an eye on one’s own interest and cheat the others. A good many people told him: what’s the good of it? What do you need more than the others for? Or: the state won’t become poor and penniless – for the reason that he always carefully and reliably fulfilled his tasks and duties. In spite of such remarks, Jakob Oberman did not change but worked on in all sincerity. He has a good consciences towards himself and society. He does not have to feel ashamed in front of his people. Maybe, he even helped others from among the working population to change their attitude towards labour by setting them a good example. Jakob Karlovich’s life takes place according to an exact time schedule: he gets up at 6 in the morning, has lunch at 12 and always takes his evening meal exactly at the same time. His family also used to fix the run of the days during the hay-harvest: their work in the fields began at 8 am, they had lunch from 12-13 pm, they finished work at 5 pm. Owing to the fact that he knew to strictly organize his own time, he would neither allow himself nor the people around him to let themselves go. On the whole, the great sense of solidarity was the most essential thing to all of them. Many a person probably make fun of him, others take example by his way of life. If we would all do our utmost, a good deal of our daily problems could be resolved without much delay.
… When he returned from Kansk this time, he hardly managed to reach Irbey within a day. The distance was 80 km, after all. He evidently tried to take the direct way. There was anold road used by resettlers and prisoner transports at that time. And he was lucky enough to get a lift for about 20 kms. A truck taking cereals to one of the huge granaries went into the same direction. The next morning he had to cross the river Kan by means of a so-called plashkout (a kind of a push boat without self-propulsion carrying freight on its upper deck. New Encyclopedic Dictionary, p. 924). 60 kms were yet ahead of him.
“The boat was not yet there, but it was already drawing near. I told the lad that I had to get to the other side of the river as quickly as possible, but at that time there was no regular ferry traffic in the plans. Thus, I had to see that I gor farther on foot. Well, the path was full of puddles: It was all muddy, and I was walking on and on and on … It was pouring from morning till night – incessantly. My cardigan was all soaked through. I thought I might manage to get up to Taloy, where I would be able to go into the store and take something along. When I stood in front of the store I noticed that it was closed, and I had nothing to eat but a glass of butter purchased in secret and a crust of bread. I was walking on, until I reached Kremshchenka. There was a store on top of the hill. What next? I bought myself a bottle of vodka, malenko (some) sweets, malenko (something) to eat. I sat down on a sosniachke (pine block) near the exit and took malenko (a slight) meal. It was still raining. I had malenko (a little drop) of vodka and then continued my way. I somehow had the impression that I was now walking much quicker. I was in a much better humour than before. It was getting dark. Night fell in. I magaed to get up to Pokrovka (50 kms away from Irbey). It was pitch-black. I went over to the stables. There was an office. I dropped in and talked to the watchman. – Well, lie down over there! Who is supposed to forbid you to to stay overnight? Thus, I made up my bed, had malenko (a little something) to eat and fell into a slumber. I got up early the following morning, it was still dark. It was autumn after all. I set off again. At 8 o’clock I arrived back home in Stepanovka. You can see, how long an official journey would sometimes last at that time.
Once again J.K. Oberman got caught in a heavy rainshower. But this time without any consequences. It seems that he had not taken along the bottle of vodka without good reason. Maybe it helped him to avert off injuries to his health. He always tenderly calls bread: little crust. At that time people were well aware of how much a piece of bread was worth. Let us direct our attention to the word “malenko“. The way it is being used in Jakob Oberman’s memories it is characteristic for the Siberians. It means that Jakob Karlovich had already adopted a number of Siberian words from the locals. And any piece of wood he will usually call the tender name of “sosniachok” (little pinery). Either, he quickly got used to his new surrpoundings and became very familiar with nature, or he loved it from the bottom of his heart. When he speaks, he often repeats certain words: “I walked on and on and on”. Thus, he points out that it was an interminable trip, that he had to cover a long distance that day. Every now and then something very strange happens: if he recalls the past, it is as if he would repeat the actions he took in a similar situation then, whereby he often talks to himself. His knowledge of the German language is sinking more and more into oblivion and he forgot all about Ukrainian – all that is left is Russian vocabulary, and he speaks the language with a Siberian dialect. From this we may conclude that repression and deportation cause pauperization to the original culture of the resettlers. Under different circumstances and on more favourable conditions, without having made the bitter experience of internal exile, it would have to be expected that Jakob Oberman would still be able to speak three languages. However, life in exile limited the development of his cultural development. He forgot about the languages and about The Ukrainian and German songs. There is only one thing that forced its way through – his passion for playing the accordion. He plays it well. He liked to play the melodies of Russian songs, and he still does. His favourite song is “Lisaveta” He enjoys to play this melody, as well as others, still today; his accordion is already 47 years old and in a good condition.
And there is something else to be mentioned yet: Jakob Karlovich has never been a Communist. All his life he has been a subscriber to the “Pravda” (newspaper “Truth”; translator’s note). He is interested to learn what is going on in the country. Another surprising fact is that he and Maria Aleksandrovna haved not missed a single poll. They always used to dress nicely and then go to the polls, which they consider their duty. It means that they are being very concerned about their country till today; they are not indifferent at all.
During his childhood Yasha did not even have the opportunity to become a member of the Young Pioneer Organisation. Instead, they were mobilized in the 1950s, when political work among the Germans attracted a certain attention. They were shown that they were citizens of the state, too.
In order to be able to receive the permission for an extension of his official trip in Kansk, he had to make use of a boat. Once (this was at the time when he was still serving his camp sentence), the senior mechanic, lieutenant Mukhomorov, proposed Jakob Oberman to go with him by a dugout canoe, which he had bought from an old resettler at 100 rubles. But he was unable to navigate it by his own. Jakob Karlovich agreed, for he was an experienced raftsman. Within a day they managed to get up to the mouth of the river Kungus – about 100 kms, after all. At that time there were poles at both sides of the embankment, spaced at intervals of one kilometer. They started counting from the lower to the upper reaches, enabling the raftsmen to easily find out, which distance they had covered during their work. And this knowledge also made it easier for them to plan and organize their work and controll the rafting process. Along the riverbank there were the telecommunication cables, it went through all villages situated close to the river. The villages of the resettlers were about 5-6 kilometers away from eachother. This had been considered necessary to secure a smooth flow of economy and facilitate everyday life. One could cover such a small distance within an hour. My friends and I had the opportunity to assure ourselves of this fact when walking to the village of Ambarchik on foot. In each village they had a telephone, and you can still find the old telegraph poles today. If they intended to make a phonecall, they did like this: they turned the crank handle once and someone would lift the receiver in the village of Stariki; twice – the village of Romanovka, three times – Galunka, four times – Irbeiskoe … The telephone connection was needed badly to transmit information and urgent messages regarding the rafting of logs, to receive instructions from the management or news on possible attempts of prisoners to escape, etc.
Jakob Karlovich returned from this ordinary trip safe and sound. But they were of two minds about taking the boat from Kansk further upstream. This would have been too exhausting and time-consuming, for there were no motorboats available at that time. So they usually went the way back on foot, or went with some driving past vehicle.
From 1957-1981, when he went on pension, Jakob Karlovich was mainly working for the timber industry, felling trees, chopping and removing timber (Appendix 13). Only under exeptional circumstances, if he was required to substitute the normer, they transitionally sent hom to work in the office. Whenever he had to deal with documents, he would generate them with utmost accuracy. Former colleagues do recall this until today. He did not receive a work book until 1957. The first entry was from the year 1945, the last one dates from 1986.
Below you will find a chronolic listing of his occupational activities: raftsman, normer, lumberjack, planner, worker for the timber industry, responsible for the piling of wood, normer, lumberjack, dispatcher, responsible brigadier for the removal of logs, lumberjack. Judging from what was entered into the work book, our former raftsman did not like to sit in the office for a long time, but preferred to go back into his work brigade as soon as practicable. He was of the opinion that this was his position within the working class.. He was awarded the first steepening incentives in 1959, on the eve of the 1st of May. The complete list of rewards he received looks as follows:
Year and description of the award
1959 Official expression of thanks
1962 Official expression of thanks
1962 Honourable mention at the „Board of honour“
1963 Honourable mention at the „Board of honour“
1965 Honourable mention at the „Board of honour“
1967 Diploma
1967 Honourable mention at the „Board of honour“
1968 Diploma
1969 Diploma
1970 Anniversary diploma
1970 Medal of „distinguished labour“ (Annex 15)
1970 Official expression of thanks
1971 Official expression of thanks
1971 valuable gift
1971 Honourable mention at the „Board of honour“
1972 Honorary appointment of the „Guardsman of Forest District N°.17” Appendix 16)? Award: 100 rubles
1973 Diploma
1973 Emblem “Winner of socialist competition 1973” (Appendix 17)
1974 Honourable mention at the „Board of honour“
1975 Official expression of thanks
1975 Official expression of thanks
1976 Official expression of thanks
1977 bonus
1978 valuable gift
1980 bonus
1980 Dankesbekundung
1980 Ehrenurkunde
1981 Medal of „Veteran of labour“ (Annex 18)
Within 22 years of his working life, the lumberjack received 29 awards. The list shows that Jaob Karlovich was a true progressive-minded worker. The most interesting thing is that most of the awards specified on the list hold moral character. Let us concentrate our attention to the fact that he was not given credit for good labour during the 14 years before 1959. They would only appear two years after the camp was closed down. However, it does not mean that a person did not do his job well, it means that Jakob Karlovich, as victim of political reprisals, did not have any right to be honoured or awarded – an indicative of the fact that deportees were not considered adequate citizens of their country. But as soon as he got employed with an ordinary enterprise, it became a rule that, 2 or 3 times a year, he received an entry by the management for having done diligent labour.
Apart from his specialized skills as a lumberjack, he, the already deep-rooted Siberian, also expertly knew how to set stoves. Yet in 1953 some prisoners without escort decided to bring Jakob Karlovich a stove. “They had been trying to heat it, but it would not burn. At that time, however, I did not know very much about such things. Nevertheless I crept into and noticed that some interior pipe ran vertically. All the smoke came fair into my face and then escaped through the other pipes – thus, all the heat got lost. The Russian stoves had a hot plate and an oven. And then I started thinking about how to improve the system. I disassembled the whole stove, found a couple of deficiencies and remedied them. The stove worked properly. I understood the matter myself – I had been learning by doing”. Later, his fellow countrymen would more than only once turn to Jakob Karlovich, asking him to build a Russian stove for them. He never declined, when they had a favour to ask of him, for he was quite well-educated and had a wide knowledge of handicraft matters. They also asked hm to pull down the drying granary, and after he had gone on pension, he began to tie birch rods into besoms, which he either sold or gave away on special occasions.
Talking about wages Jakob Karlovich observes that they were, of course, very low. However, the attached farm gardens were a great support. When they proceeded to timber felling and logging, he took his “lunch” with him: at home he packed a bag: a bottle of milk, bread, a couple of eggs, a piece of abcon. When he went to unload timber, he left his bag in the driver’s cabin of the tractor, for he never exactly knew, where he would be at lunchtime. As a result, the milk in the bottle had turned into butter by the time he was to have his lunch break. On the producing sector they were carrying out a competition of communist labour. Under J.K’s direction the brigade represented one of the leading participants. When they were to decide, which of the brigades should be conferred the designation “Brigad of communist labour”, the technical engineer –Chuchko – said: What’s the difference, after all, of wether you work in the communist sense or just do a great job? You have to work, anyway. The brigade agreed with him on this point. In 1963 it was a awarded the “Diploma of the collective of communist labour”, and each of the workers received a certificate showing him a communist-way shock worker (Annex 18 a). The people wanted to earn more money, and whenever they did not have the mostly needed technical equipment and devices available or in cases when they had no spare parts to make necessary repairs, then, of course, the labourers demanded to be furnished with everything badly needed as soon as possible. And then they would put their shoulder to the wheel. As far as the brigade of communist labour is concerned, Jakob Karlovich is of the opinion that this was “ a mere matter of form”: They work for money, drew wages in order to to be able to feed and clothe their families and provide them with shoes … But what on earth “communist labour” was supposed to be, he could not say at that time, and he still finds no suitable explanation today. “People were in need of money. If you amnaged to do the number of cubic meters determined by the planned quota, you would receive your mone. Nevertheless, we earned a poor salary. A cleaning woman, for example, received 260 rubles (after the monetary reform this was equivalent to 26 rubles). We earned 260-270 rubles, and later 300-360 rubles. As soon as we had 360 rubles at our disposal, things were improving. The people agreed that this made things much easier than at the time when they had to manage with an income of 260rubles only. Jakob Karlovich recalls a nice lump-sum payment in the amount of 1200 rubles. He brought along a gramophone from Kansk, which is today being kept with our shool museum. It is in such a good condition that one might even use it. He also bought chrome leather boots for himself and his wife, for women would also wear this kind of boots then.
Late in the 1960s, when the Order of October Revolution came into fashion, the question arose about whether Jakob Karlovich was an appropriate person to be decorated with this order, too. The proposal was brought forward. Thy procured an opinion to give an idea of his personality. As a result, judging by all parameters, they selected the lumberjack for being the most suited candidate. He did not drink alcohol, did not smoke, but – he was not a member of the CPSU. The news about Oberman’s being proposed for the receipt of the medal of honour had already come to everybody’s ears. In the end, the idea was rejected, since he was not a communist. They found another person instead – a fomer front-line soldier and communist, who also deserved well of his country. Apart from this it is highly probable that he decided not to decorate him with the order in view of his past – he was from among the deported, repressed,; he was of Germannationality …, which means that the ruling powers were, at all stages of his life and inspite of his human dignity, of the opinion that he was not an equal citizen of the state. And in the case in hand, when they were to decide about the dedication of the order, they mainly considered the factor of his deportation and the fact that he was of German nationality. Did Jakob Karlovich ever feel offended? Has he ever been angry at such an attitude towards him? “I am far from feeling offended, for all this was not based on the idea of a single person, after all.The whole machinery of power was involved. They were afraid of the people, and that is why they deported us to this remote place. And at the moment of our deportation there was no time to think about it. They gave an order and we were to leave. They gave us 24 hours to get ready; then we had to set of”. Using the expression “single person” Jakob Oberman obviously had J.V. Stalin in mind. However, he did not like to mention his true name. Why? It must be assumed that our pensioner, now as before, is afraif of expressing something needless. Or maybe life taught him not to speak about certain things to the very last end. Or, maybe, he is even critical of the matter, having entirely conceived that Stalin did not rule alone. JakobKarlovich words somehow sugegsted something else yet: the ruling powerd (“they”) were afraid of the people. For they had already deported people in the 1920s and 1930s – from all classes. But most of them were simple people – and maybe this was the main reason, after all. They carried off all, who were expected to be capable of thought. For what purpose? You will not be able to give a plausible answer to this question within 24 hours.
Recently, Aleksey Andreevich Babiy (“Memorial” organization) held a lecture on reprisals, in the course of which he mentioned an additional reason for the mass prosecutions: the people were repressed, as the state was in need of cheap slave workers to build up socialsim. The state got them from among the repressed persons. Both these thoughts – fear of the people and cheap labour – are the most probable reasons, at least if one has not studied politics too thoroughly.
Jakob Karlovich Oberman says that he never bothered about politics. But they have always been trying to call him in for various party matter. Not only once they proposed him to become a member of the communist party. “Once the party secretary made such a suggestion, and I replied: I am not a communist, I am an honest, upright, non-party bolshevik. That was all I told him. I did not want to join the party. The beseeched and urged the people, tried to enlist them from among the from among the working communists, but I refused”. From his position we may draw the conclusion that Jakob Karlovich is of the opinion that the meanings of “communist” and “bolshevik” are different. He considers himself to be an honest bolshevik, which means that the attitude of the workers towards communism was a negative one in a sense. When he calls himself an honest bolshevik – who were these communists then in his view?
When studying the documents of this honest bolshevik, I also became familiar with his military passport, which the Irbeisk district military commissar reached out to him on the 7 April 1964. The column “Military Service” contains an entry that Oberman was enlisted among the reservists on 11 January 1957. He occupied the military rank of a “private soldier”, although he did not have to swear any oath. Another column says: “Without basic training fit for service on the front”. In 1966 he received the call-up order, which was withdrawn in 1976. Enlisted on 10 April 1964, crossed off the military register on 17 January 1977. This, Jakob Karlovich became a draftee at the age of 31, which means that the state returned to him the right and obligation to defend his native country 12 years after the war had come to an end. The repressed Germans finally got the right to defend their fatherland. This recognition gave them moral satisfaction. They also began to call-up the younger people into the army again. They sent the call-up order to my grandfather Robert Aleksandrovich, to the brother of Jakob Karlovich’s wife in 1959. He served with the air forces for three years. In 1961 they mobilized his brother Viktor, in 1968 his brother Yuriy. Jakob Oberman’s son Viktor served from 1968-1971, his second son Vladimir joined the army in 1979 … Until today all lads from our large family have been and are being conscripted for military service. My brother Nikolai was in the army, too. They all served or are yet serving honestly and conscientiously.
However, the deportations had serious consequences even for Jakob Karlovich’s
youngest son. Excerpt from an article published in the district newspaper – “A
clean copy of life”: “Volodia was passionately dreaming of serving his time; he
intensely prepared himself to be one day able to graduate from the special naval
school. The military commissar accepted his personal documents and said: Go and
wait for your call-up. - So
they were waiting patiently until August, when it was time to pass the exams,
but they had not received any reply yet. Volodia decided to go to the
commissariate himself, in order to learn, what was going on, what had happened.
Once again they gave him an evasive answer – “go and wait”. In vain they were
waiting for the call-up to arrive. The father who had gone through severe
restrictions and discipline in the Kraslag made an educated guess about what was
the reason for this reaction. But how was he to explain to his youngish son, who
had the disposition to believe in truth and justice and the good in people, who
was of the sincere opinion that he lived in the best country of the world?
Later, when the military commissar was visiting the family by sheer chance, he
admitted, after having emptied a few glasses of vodka, that Volodka was “unfit”
for military service – due to his nationality”.
(“Irbeisk Truth” Newspaper dated 16 February 1996). That very year Viktor
Jakovlevich, the elder brother, who had earlier been Volodka’s class teacher,
sent a letter to the vocational school asking them to explain the reasons for
their refusal. They sent a short reply by return of post: the documents had been
received too late. In fact, one must understand that such questions were under
state control in the late 1970s, and maybe they are even today. Possibly, such
decisions also depend on the person who gets hold of the documents.
Another dramatic incident took place in Vladimir’s life. He was a militia man, a student of the faculty of law by correspondence course. He had fallen in love with a Russian girl, a nurse. The girl’s father was working for the KGB as a colonel, her grandfather had died during the 1941-1945 war. When the question about the official registration of their marriage arose, Vladimir was practically forced to assume the surname of his wife, for even in 1984, when the marriage took place, some families yet showed a distrustful attitude towards Russian Germans. Her parents gave their consent provided that the bridegroom assumed the girl’s family name. Vladimir had to agree, although the civil registry offices usually enter the husband’s surname on the relevant documents. Afterwards, the young man wrestled with this problem for several months. He was in agony. And then, finally, he convinced his wife to have the certificate of marriage altered, to have it made out into his surname. Soonafter, the wife’s father went on pensionand moved to Rostov Region. Since then his parents-in-law have not paid a single visit to the young couple. Why? Maybe because of the young man’s nationality. In the 1990s a mass leave of Russian Germans to Germany set in. And nowadays, many do not so strictly object to German surnames anymore. German names have even become sort of modern.
Jakob Oberman’s daughter got married to a Russian lad and assumed his surname. This gave her peace and quiet for the rest of her life. Similar examples can be quoted from the biography of his eldest son Viktor. And there are a lot of them. In 2002, when Viktor Jakovlevich intensively dealt with the perpetuation of the commemoration of the victims of repression, the leader of the village soviet adumbrated “that they were not talking about a memorial to be erected for just one nation”. And he insisted on telling the listeners about who, when, why and where the people had been deported to. And the leader recalled how he himself, when he was still a child, watched and listened to all the indignities towards the prisoners, witnessed attempts to escape and the execution of two prisoners. This subject was touched on during the next session, and the deputees expressed their preparedness to raise a monument. The people have different opinions on this. Some hold that it is a memorial for the Germans, which shows that they do not know the history of repressions good enough by half. A woman whose grandfather had been subject to expropriation, advanced the opinion that the memorial was exclusively meant for the Germans. It is a symbol of remembrance, after all, where we use to lay flowers, light torches and organize a commemorative meeting every year on October 30 (Annex 19). In the summer of 2004 we raised a cross made of larchwood on the prisoner graves in the neighbouring village of Ambarchik - together with grammar school students from Krasnoyarsk. The Kraslag was organized in this place in 1938. Accompanied by the guests we visited J.K. Oberman’s family, the family of my great-grandfather A.I. Leonhard. We listened to stories about expelled Germans, and I really think that we should bear in remembrance the soldiers killed in action during the Great Patriotic War, as well as the victims of reprisals. In our village this resolution is being realized.
In 1990 the government passed the Decree of the President of the USSR “About the Rehabilitation of all Victims of Political Repressions (during the 1920s - 1950s) and the Restoration of their Rights”. It says that “ … the repressions, which were applied to citizens during the 1920s – 1950s for political, social, national, religious or other reasons contradict all common civil human rights and are therefore to be considered as wrong and illegal. The rights of these citizens are to be restored”. (Collection of acts of law and directives, p. 188). The state finally agreed to accept its conduct as illegal. How did the special resettlers feel about this decision? They were happy and relieved that justice had finally prevailed, that they had been declared innocent, that there civil liberties, which turned them into adequate citizens with equal rights, had been restored. “Rehabilitated individuals and their descendants have the right to retrieve from the files all yet existing documents, photos and personal papers”. (Law of the USSR “On the Rehabilitation of Victims of political Repressions”, Collection of acts of law and directives, p. 199). The lastmentioned law was passed in 1991. Accordingly, former exiles were assigned the right to receive benefit payments. For instance: a 50% financial aid on medicine, fare reduction for public transport, preferrential installation of telephone extensions, etc. It took 50 years to restore the rights of repressed citizens.
Meanwhile, J.K. Oberman is dealing with everyday life problems – apart from keeping his house in an exemplary state of tidiness. On his own initiative he regular cleans the riverbank, takes care of the bridge which crosses the river Kungus and tidies up the forest tracks which lead through the adjacent woodland. After the snowsmelt, when the whole ground is muddy and practically impassable, he lays floorboards. Whenever he notices a tree on the point of toppling, he will hurry up to fell it in time, thus avoiding to put his fellow countrymen at risk.
He keeps an account of the animals living in the forest and is exactly in the know about where a scirrel or sable passed by, where the clutches of the hazel grouse are to be found and where one can track down lynxes. In fine, he is familiar with the forest. He never ever touched a shotgun himself. However, during the passed 10 years, in the wintertime, he fixed so-called “fish boxes” (a kind of trap) below the ice, and if he is successful, he will be able to treat his relatives and acquaintances to a nice meal of eelpouts. He is always aware of the exact water level of the river, knows when starlings and martins will arrive … He has been recording all relevant meteorological data during the past 25 years (Annex 20) - data about temperatures, rainfalls, sky cover, wind directions … And he has been recording all this information three times a day. A true data bank is waiting for its researcher. And this is, in fact, a field he is passionate and crazy about. The records also provide information on flushings, the first appearance of frogs and the very first calling of the cuckoo in the spring …In 1994, for instance, no starlings were to be seen in the district for some reason or other. Why did they not come? Another question, another extraordinary phenomen to be researched.
After he had gone on pension, our veteran of labour committed another heroic dead yet: on his own initiative he built two bridges across the creek, in order to enable the people to walk to the cemetery on the nearest way. When he made the proposal to construct a nice path leading directly to the cemetery, the people would not understand his intentions. They said: “Well, if you are so full of creative power, then go and build it yourself”! And this is what he did. Whenever the children have once again demolished the bench at the bus stop, he will fix it for sure. But he does not expect any mention. He has already received what he is entitled to.
After he had ceremonially gone into retirement, the timber industry sold him a motor chain saw (it was impossible to buy something like that officially in a shop at that time) and assigned him a “Ural” motor-bike. Apart from looking after his own domestic matters, he is voluntarily dealing with the improvement of the reality surrounding him. Most of his fellow countrymen show a certain response to what he is doing for the public. Every now and then, upon his request, someone will go and get him an urgently needed wooden beam or a couple of bars. Many people ask him: “Why do you do this?” – Well, he simply is like that. A man, who is always prepared to render every assistance, to look after matters of common interest. Labour is the most essential thing in his life. He was never devious, but always tried his best to lead a straight life. Thus, Siberia became his second home –and maybe it is even ranking first after all these years.
I promised to tell tell something on Jakob Karlovich’s nephew, about Yevgeniy Yakovlevich Oberman, from which he got separated in 1941. Among the relatives there was a regular exchange of letters. The relatives in Krasnoyarsk Territory sent letters to Kabardino-Balkaria and received letters from there. During the past six years these ties broke. J.K. Oberman assumed that another stirps had been rooted out. But then, all of a sudden, something very interesting happened: the schoolmaster of the Krasnoyarsk State University of Pedagogics, N.I. Drozdov, made a visit in Stepanovka and almost immediately drew our director’s, W.J. Oberman`s, attention to the fact that he knew another man yet, who’s surname was Oberman, too. He said that his first and father’s name was Yevgeniy Yakovlevich. He was wondering, whether this could be a relative of ours. He showed the schoolmaster a couple of picturers and he confirmed that the man on the photos was, in fact, this very Oberman. In Drozdov’s childhood he had evidently taught painting and drawing. The schoolmaster reported that Y.Y. Oberman and his family had emigrated to Germany, that they were communicating by means of the internet and that he was in possession of his address.
Drozdov took pictures of Jakob Karlovich, Maria Aleksandrovna and Viktor
Jakovlevich and send them by fax to Germany. Since then their contact has been
re-established. The war separated many people from eachother, but due to such
strange coincidences it might sometimes happen that, even after a period of 60
years, they will be able to reunite. As a present from the Krasnoyarsk State
University of Pedagogics Nikolai Ivanovich Drozdov
arranged a computer room for our school. Our fate is characterized by so many
encounters, so many ups and downs and see-saw changes.
… At present, Jakob Karlovich is trying to decide about a problem from a very personal point of view. For a long time he has been unable to bring himself to do this. If he could manage to get a written confirmation certifying that he was digging out trenches in 1941 for a total period of three months, then he would probably receive a benefit in addition to his usual pension. He has already sent two letters to Saporozhe Region, which remained unanswered. He sent a third letter only recently.
Let us now try to define my position within our family tree (Annex 21). I appear as a representative of the forth generation. My great-grandfather, A.I. Leonhard, had 8 children, there were 19 grandchildren and 24 great-grandchildren – I am one of them. Apart from this, he had 3 great-great-grandchildren. There is one interesting detail: most of the children have a Russian spouse, with only one exception – daughter Maria, who got married to Jakob Karlovich. From other nations I could only make out two Ukrainians. Three families, setting today’s benchmarks, had many children: these were the families of Maria, Aleksandra and Yuriy. It means that the Germans evidently abandoned another tradition under the new living conditions. Among the grandchildren families with two children are prevailing. Let us have a look at the first names: Aleksander (6 times), Viktor (4 times), Vladimir (3 times), Ira (3 times), Olya (3 times), Andrei (3 times), Nina (2 times), Valia (2 times), Nadia (2 times), Roman (2 times), Yuriy (2 times) … Obviously, the head of our family tree, A.I. Leonhard, had a certain influence on the choice of first names. Aleksander is the most popular among them. Grandfather calls the very last one appearing in our family tree (Sasha, 3 years) Alexander V. All our relatives live in the settlement of Stepanovka, Irbey District, Krasnoyarsk Territory; another family branch lives in Dzershinsk District. Grandma Olga is the only one, who left for Germany. It means that all family members, except her, live in Krasnoyarsk Territory. They have all been working here or still do today. This we can say, that the state, after having deported the Leonhard family to this place, received dozens of working hands, which until today help to promote the development of Siberia. Here they went to school and got their on-the-job training. 13 of his direct offsprings finished the university, 7 graduated from a collage (by correspondance course). The different kinds of profession split up as follows: teachers and educators – 16, foresters and lumberjacks – 9, working for the militia – 4, medical professions – 2, cooks – 2, merchants – 2, and others. Just a glimpse will suffice to reveal the main, common tendencies throughout the generations of our family: teachers occupy the first place, maybe as a result of the fact that the Germans attached great importance to the education of their children. The second group comprises jobs concerning the supply and processing of timber: drivers, carpenters, joiners. lumberjacks – which indicate the influence of the geographic factor. The third group is represented by staff members of the militia. This is related to the ambition of educating people. Until now none of them has ever been convicted of a crime. I, personally, take to the profession of a teacher, and I like to take exercise.
From all these details we may reason that the German roots within my family tree are practically withering, and they will soon have disappeared completely. But sometimes, on common public holidays we might still hear the melody and text of a German song, sung by representatives of the elderly generation. Today my relatives hardly have any relation to the previous generations of Russian Germans, except for their surnames. The repressions caused an entire russification of my ancestors, who meanwhile adopted and fully understand the Siberian culture. Just in the very depths of our souls there still remain some tiny sparks of the sense of belonging to this lost culture. This is the heavy price the Russian Germans had to pay for the repressions they had to go through.
1. Repressions against the Russian Germans. The punished people. “Banner” Publishers, Moscow, 1999
2. V.J. Oberman. About me and my countrymen. Krasnoyarsk, 2000
3. Collection of acts of law and directives concerning repressions and the rehabilitation of victims of political reprisals, Moscow, 1993
4. New Encyclopedic Dictionary, Moscow, 2002
5. Dictaphone record of an interview with J.K. Oberman – a victim of politcal reprisals
1. Picture showing J.K. Oberman, 1981
2. Profile of an antitank trench
3. Certificate on the internal exile and release from special resettlement
4. Page from the questionnaire with personal particulars issued in 1949
5. Map of the rafting routes 1945-1953
5a. Autobiography of the deportee, 1949
6. Mechanical equipment and tools of a raftsman
7. Raftsmen’s barrack (drawing by S. Belykh, student of the 8th term)
8. Certificate about J.K. Oberman’s internal exile for life
9. Picture taken in 1949 at the moment of his registration
10. Questionnaire with personal particulars of the special resettler
11. Personal file of the exiled (N°. 1112)
12. Certificate of the year 1956 about the abolition of restrictions regarding the legal position of the Germans
13. Copy of the first page of his work-book
14. Diploma of the year 1970
15. Copy of a certificate confirming the rewarding of the medal of “distinguished labour”
16. Certificate about the awarding of the honourable title of a „ Guardsman of Forest District N°.17
17. Certificate confirming the rewarding of the Emblem “Winner of socialist competition”
18. Certificate confirming the rewarding of the medal „Veteran of Labour“.
18a. Diploma of the Collective of Communist Labour
19. At the memorial site – 30 October 2003
20. Pages from his notebook containing weather records
21. My position within our family tree