For lack of time we did not manage to meet with those resettlers who are coming to Sharypovo District today. Instead of that we succeeded to see the family of Ivan Yakovlevich and Emma Andreevna Maisner (Meissner?) – Volga Germans, who were deported to Siberia by order of the Father of all peoples. They live in Novaya Altatka on the main road. When we knocked at the gate, the answer was a friendly bark of several dogs. The biggest among them, a Collie, was a hog-tied watchdog. An unusual sight for the eyes of a town dweller, and therefore we intended to approach and pet the animal with the words: „Quiet, silly, you do not need to behave that way…“. Its masters, however, turned out to be exceedingly hospitable and communicative.
They were both born in Engels, and both are over eighty years old now. In their home town they worked for a kolkhoz farm, Ivan Yakovlevivch as a tracorists‘ brigade leader, his wife handled a threshing machine or was helping with every other kind of labor. They were not rich, but made a living. In 1941 there life made a twist, and this did not just happen because of the outbreak of war: they were chased away from their homes and deported to an unknown region. The resettlers (about a dozen families) were forced to take up residence in Glinka, a village situated not far from Altatka. In 1942 Ivan Yakovlevich was mobilized to the trudarmy. Due to her pregnancy, Emma Andreevna escaped mobilization, but as a general rule they came for everybody, who was not fit for going to the front for reasons of health or ideological motives. Among them – German women..
Maisner recalls the labor army as a nightmare. At first they were kept in Krasnaya Sopka for some time, then in Uzhur, and later they were taken to the Kirov Region in order to fell trees. They received the same food like in a camp –50 grams of bread a day. Therefore many people starved to death. They wore the clothes they had brought with them or tried to make use of any materials they could find: lace-up shoes were made from old, disused tire jackets, trousers and padded sweaters were also sewn from waste-products.
In the beginning they were not allowed to even take a single day off. Later they were permitted, for reasons of pure generosity, to stay away from work on three days a month.
They authorities did not only treat adults, who were of „wrong“ nationality, with utmost rigor, but also their children. Little children, whose parents were fighting against hunger and cold in the labor army, were taken to orphanages. And those, who had turned ten, were forced to earn their living themselves.…
The Maisners did not have do drink this cup of woe, after all, their six children are alive and in comparatively good health. Admittedly, they do not know any German, and they do not have the intention to learn it, although their parents are still using their mother-tongue whenever they talk to each other; their knowledge of the Russian language is still quite poor.
Ivan Yakovlevich returned from the trudarmy in 1946. At that time just one lumber jack brigade from 18 was left; according to his words, all the others had died from back-breaking toil and other unfortunate circumstances. Each brigade had comprised between 2500 and 3000 men.…
Afterwards they worked for the sovkhoz. When the times changed, people stopped considering them as enemies of the people – they began a new life, and they did not mange worse than all the others. They removed to Altatka, where they were assigned housing. When they went on pension, they were reputable people, and Ivan Yakovlevich was even honored by a medal for being a veteran of labor. Hence, their life had sort of straightened out ….
We asked them – and we were not bound to do this, if they had ever been desirous to leave for Germany, when they finally got the possibility to leave Russia, as many Volga Germans did. Away from the country, which had labeled them as its enemies, away from people who had attempted to force upon them their way of live, their ideology. No, they replay, this thought never came up with us. And why should we leave from here yet ….
Ivan Yakovlevich and Emma Andreevna thank God for the good-natured director, who is always willing to let them have at no charge cereals and bruised grain – so that they can keep up their little farming plot.
They were also very grateful to us, the uninvited guests. Thank you, they say, for having shown interest in us, in how we lived and in how we are now doing. Nonetheless, it would have been more fair to care about us a little earlier …
„Krasnoyarsk Komsomolets“, 11.06.1995