These people never had pride of place in the presidium on Victory Day. For
decades we pretended that they did not contribute to this victory at all. They
were just not mentioned.
Victory Day exclusively was the very festive day for combatants, whose
decorations were gleaming so beautifully that it was a pleasure to look at them.
Until today you will not find a single line in the memoirs of war about which
contribution the great number of workers in the back-country – the Soviet
Germans - made in order to let their country win the war. This part of history
remains to be written, for justice will, sooner or later, triumph. Even if this
is going to happen „later“, people will learn with how much self-sacrifice the
Soviet-Germans, against great odds, bitterness of life and humiliations, were
labouring in saw-mills, coal mines, factories and various kinds of enterprises.
You can walk on any road in the small town of Marinina or any of the other surrounding villages belonging to the „Kuraginskiy“ kolkhoz farm – everywhere you will find someone, who is able to show you people who were forced to work for the labour army during the war.
And you can hear stories full of tragedy and bitterness. These people kept silent for many, many years; and nobody ever requested them to tell anything about those times. Maybe, they bore those hard and grievous years in in remembrance just in the family circle
Jakob Jakovlevich Wolf is quite concerned. He is not used to giving interviews and talk a lot.
He fears that he might have done wrong for not relating to this glorious festive day in spring.
And his attitude towards victory is just the same. He was 13 years old when the people living in the Armeysk District, which is in the Saratov Region, were informed about the outbreak of war. And shortly after, all Volga Germans, innocent culprits, were confiscated their houses and all their property, loaded on freight-cars and deported to Siberia.
Together with his parents, grand-parents and two brothers he got to Ilinka. In January 1941 they came for his father to take him to the trudarmy in the Sverdlovsk Region, where he was to fell trees. In spring minor Jakob began to help with the sowing. He harrowed and ploughed with horses. He was only 15 when the met his fate: he was mobilized to the trud army, too.
Old men, middled-aged men, minors and women got seperated and were once again deported to unknown places, which were often situated in total remoteness and wilderness.
Maria Gering (Göring?) had two children, but the authorities did not take this fact into consideration at all; the children were separated from their mother; some entirely unknown old, German woman put the little ones up and brought them up. Hulda Stetinger was a very yound girl yet – she was mobilized to the labour army, too. These few people are those, which Jakob Jakovlevich is able to recall. However, there were hundreds of Germans who were mobilized to the labour front. Half of them never came back.
They went to Minusinsk on foot. There, not far from Selivanikha, they had to live in the open air and cultivate vegetables. And then they were separated and taken to different places. Jakob happened to get to Nizhniy Tagil. On the way he grew ill; he was full of lice. The train stopped in Novosibirsk; the people had to wash in some bath-house, while their clothes were disinfacted by superheated steam. Many people died from typhoid fever during the transport.
Having reached the place of final destination they were kept inquarantine for a whole month.
Then they set out to build baracks. Jakob was to provide concrete and reveted the walls. Before the war their gang had worked for an electromechanic enterprise, where they were engaged in the production of objects badly needed at the front. The women laboured for a brick works. Jakob Jakovlevich recalls that he incessantly wanted to eat. They were portioned out 800 grams of bread, sometimes just 600 or 500 grams. The watery soup made from stinging nettles was unsuitable to bring back their lost strength. And the bread – this was just what they called it, and they baked it with various kinds of ingredients. Any usual workday began at 6 o’clock in the morning. They worked without receiving wages and were not allowed to go to town. After work they had to walk back to the barracks in single file. It was impossible to stay behind or run away; the guards would keep a watchful eye on everyone.
They were all forced to demonstrate collective responsibility.
The clothing was the same that prisoners used to wear: military trousers and lace-up shoes.
They were working under the motto: „All for the front! All for victory!“ The adult man asked to send them to the front; they wanted to defend their fatherland, their Volga, their Saratov and their Engels, too. But they, they Germans who were born in the USSR, were refused the right to defend their fatherland at the front. Nevertheless, defeating hunger, cold and repeated humiliations, they helped the front in a different way. The war came to an end. Victory! How long had they been eagerly awaiting this victory! But they authorities did not make preparations to release the trud armists; they would not let them leave, neither to the Volga Region nor to Siberia. For the sake of justice, we have to admit, however, that strict regime and discipline were slightly slackened after the war. Now the forced labourers were even permitted to leave downtown or go on holiday. In 1946 Jakob Wolf started back für home on his own will. He was yearning for his father, just wanted to see him, who had returned from the labour army entirely exhausted, almost starved, and, of course, his mother and brothers, as well. He wanted nothing but see them, have a word with them and then return to the camp.
However, he was unfortunate. In Kuragino District the people were kept under the
supervision of a commander. The representatives of the authorities ruled with an
iron fist while the trud armists were struggling for life. He did not manage to
get back and from then had to go to the commandant’s office and get registered
in regular intervals. Maybe, it was even the best of all possibilities that they
would not allow him to leave. In Tagi they would certainly have threatened him
with a 20 years detention. The nightmare about compulsory registration would not
stop until 1956. In the past view years only, the remembrance of bitter
hardships and the anger about unequal rights have slightly calmed down, but
throughout all those years they
have been repressing their feelings, not allowing them to create the outward
impression that they were deeply humiliated by injustice. What for? People who
had been working for tank factories and blast-furnaces were and remained
discredit for many years. How many died, after having greedily stuffed
themselves with thrown-away foodstuffs or due to frostbites received when they
were felling trees in iciness and the absence of warm clothes? There were many
of them – hundreds of thousands of people.
Jakob Jakovlevich lived a life in dignity. He can look back on 40 years of working life, he managed to give all his children an excellent education, and even now he is always prepared to help his children and grand-children whenever needed. And this clear festive day in May is meant for him, too, for he also helped the country to defeat faschism with his own infantile hands during the war.
Jakob Fedorovich Birich, occupant of the Farm N° 1 on the territory of the „Kuraginskiy“ kolkhoz farm, spent the time in the trud army in the Kirov Region, not far from Viatka. He saw the places which are well-known from pictures of the brilliant landscapist Shishkin, with entirely different eyes. The barracks had been occupied by criminals before; they had been transferred to another place of detention, but had left as heritage to the newcomers watch towers and armed guards, a barbed-wire fence and two-storeyed plank beds. In the trud army there were Germans, Russians, Chechens and Ingushes. 700 grams of bread, watery soup which had a smell of fish and the timber industry with its felling areas, where forced labourers did not merely have to fell trees, but also were to pull them away, load them on horse-drawn vehicles and take them right through the snow more than 10 kms up to the next train station.
All this was called the Wiatlag. And then there was still the Usollag, situated in the former Molotov Region, not far from the town of Solikamsk. They were taken to this unsettled place right in the middle of the winter. They pitched tents, later built themselves dug-outs and barracks. Woodland on one side, the river on the other. This was the place they had been forced to stay in.
- The people died like flies, - says Jakob Fedorovich. – They were fed with molded pearl barley. The trudarmists lost conscience from lack of strength, they suffered from dysentery;
They were buried in the swamps after having covered them by moss. If you were unable to fulfill the norm during the day, they had to go on felling trees at nighttime. They went to sleep without taking off their clothes. As there was no possibility to have a wash, they were l bitten by lice, many suffered from typhoid fever. Instead of shoes they were wearing clogs or rags tied around their feet. They asked for the permission to go to the front, deeply convinced that it was better to die in the hail of bullets than perish from hunger, typhus and disentery.
The „Marunia“ section, which is about 120 kms away from Solikamsk, is one of the places Jakob Birich will not be able to forget till the end of his life. Already in his younger years, either in the Gainsk timber industry or in the Viatlag, he began to suffer from hernia, which still causes him pain today. He worked as a marker, tar burner, lumberjack, courier – he had douzens of jobs during the war, which made him gain experience in many professions.
After the war life became slightly less difficult; the workers received wages, but were not permitted to leave for their previous home towns or villages. Many months of waiting and hard labour yet, until he finally set out for home, where he was immediately confronted with another kind of hard labour and compulsory registration with the commandant’s office.
These people are not in possession of any distinctions awarded to them for all the hard labour they did during the Great Patriotic War. They were simply compassed and their heroic deads remained unmentioned. They were not even taken into consideration with regard to social benefits. Anyhow, the purity of their conscience and moral rights is not less valuable compared to their contemporaries, who were fighting at the military front and were showered with decorations. Although many years have passed since those times, they should finally the words of „thank you“ and „forgive us“, two words which our government usually expresses only to those, who do not want to accept this.
O. Nikanorova
„Lenins legacy“, 1991, N° 53
„Spring does not die out“.
From materials of the „Tubinsk News“ district newspaper, Abakan, 2005