The present letter is written to you by a Russian German, whose ancestors, two brothers named Friedrich und Johann Petri (born close to Zürich), served as cannoneers under Suvorov. Obviously, both brothers were experts of their trade, so that Catherine II was very content with them, for, based on her will she decided to remunerate them with honorary titles, awards and – land along the river Wolga. This, we, the decendants of two heroic cannoneers, became Russians.
My mother is from Kiev. I was born there, as well, as daughter of the red commander Fyodor Petri (a Volga German), who, at the age of 17, absconded to Moscow, where his elder brother Karl, a revolutionary by profession, lived; he wanted to take part in the revolutionary events.
Karls was executed by shooting in 1936 for being a member of the aristocratic Petri family. In 1937 and 1938 further descendants of the family were shot dead, and each of his children were sentenced to a 15-20 years’ camp detention. Thus, our family consists of a well-mixed cocktail of German, Ukrainian, Russian, Dutch, French and maybe some other blood. And nationalism means apolitical focus to me.
My grandmother was the grand-daughter of the originator of the seven-string Russian gipsy guitar and author of the very first schoolbook writtwn for this musical instrument – Ignaz von Helda, a German from Bohemia. You can read about him (as a guitarist) in Pikul’s novel “The Favorite”, also nothing happened as described in the book, but nevertheless it is intersting to read. Considering the fact that the resettling of the Volga Germans was implemented all in a hurry on the basis of a strictly confidential ukase in 1941 (and under horrible circumstances) and that the people had to leave behind all their property for others – just following the motto: go into the house and take awa what you like -, you may justifiably ask yourself: how many secrets have disappeared from grandma’s extensive library and from her hobnailed chest, which we had never been allowed to touch….. By the way, I dared to take her ball gown from this very chest in 1940, when our school N° 136 in Engels intend to organize the celebration of New Year’s Day. I will never forget about the political “bath” I had to take in the office of the Communist Youth Organization. Luck was on my side, for two of my aunts were favoured with long lives, so that I learned many a thing which they had not dared to enunciate in public at that time – in fear of severe punishment: they told me about all the cruel truth which the elder generation, fearing serious sanctions from the part of the NKVD and KGB authorities, took with them into their graves.
As far as I am concerned I became a “german spy” myself at the age of 16 due to the above-mentioned ukase. I passed through camps, had to experience special resettling; at the age of 17 I had to work for anoil production company in Ishimbai. During the winter of 1942 the average death rate was 10-15 prisoners every night. I was lucky. Our unit (250 individuals) was transferred to a brickworks in Sterlimatak, where I had to knead loam, cement, sand and water to produce some fireproof material for the construction of underground bunkers and dug-outs. I was forced to do this at night-time, without disposing of the necessary strength, almost starved and under the loud clamour of the female supervisor of the controllboard (whose face looked like the face of an angel). Her name was Naya. “If you move this way, you won’t be able to fulfill the norm!” My rheumatoid arthritis comes from those times; fortunately, I am in a position to hold a pen between two fingers of my right hand.
By the way, in spite of my crippled fingers I even play the piano every now and then.
But I would like to go on with my story … Russian baptists, who were repressed, too, saved us, the “KGB Germans” from starving. And a Tatar physician without legs averted the amputation of one of my legs: the horse Ignashka, just as hungry as I was, collapsed and fell down on me. The leg swell, began to putrify – we need to amputate, that’s all! However, the physician managed to heal my leg by using a rarely used streptocide. We continued to be human even under such unhuman conditions.
I have reached the central point of my letter now – there are always good people… everywhere, even in prisoner camps. As we know, the camp inmates later had to cope with forced resettlement, which was mostly organized in the environments of the camp. My husband and I (he is a Russiam German, too, a medic by profession, who had to work as a miner while serving his camp sentence; he caught a serious cold, he got a kidney disease and finally left me behind as a widow with three children, when I was only 30 years old) - well, my husband and I met in the taiga, in the “Volchanka” pit, as I already said – the prime of intelligentia. I can recall a lot of people from those times. A.I. Solovev was the director of the House of Culture for the miners of the settlement (you were not allowed to remove yourself more than 5 km away!); he had to serve a 10 years’ sentence; he had been an artist of the Academic Theater of Arts in Moscow, before making some witty joke during a concert that took place in the Kremlin. I also recall his wife; she also served a 10 years’ sentence. She had been a singer of the Bolshoi Theater. And I recall many, many more…
We often remember the war, which brought about such a sudden rebound into the lives of entire people. In spite of the fact that Stalin betrayed us, the Russian Germans also fought against fascism. In 1941 my cousin, lieutenant Yuriy Schmid, was seriously wounded near Tula. Having hardly recovered, he intended to go back to the front as soon as possible. However, when getting his papers ready, he was suddenly told to go home – to Siberia.
While being in hospital nobody had informed hin about the resettlement of his
Russian wife Nina and his four month-old son to Siberia, for she was the wife of
a Volga German. The little boy died during the trip. Upon his arrival, Yuriy was
immediately put under KGB supervision and was taken to some pit in the Primorye
Region in 1942. In the summer of 1943 he escaped, together with another
lieutenant, the former artist Nikolai Wolf, from this remote mining area, after
having falsified the surnames in their military passports (Nikolai was utterly
talented in such things) into Shmelev and Volkov. They moved towards the
railroad mainline, climbed a military train and went directly to the front. Nina
was aware of all this, but she only told me about it in 1972. Yura Schmid (Shmelev)
died far away from his home near Budapest, but nobody knows where he was buried.
Among our relatives there is Hero of the Soviet Union, as well – Nikolai Leonov,
a German from Balzer (nowadays Krasnoarmeisk). He had become an orphan, before
therevolution, yet. His father gave him and his three brothers to a Russian
nanny – to Nastia Leonova. She brought the children up, and after his father’s
death, Nikolai adopted the surname of his “mama” Nastia. Neither he nor his aunt
were affected by the resettling of the Volga Germans, for their passports
evidenced that they were “Russians”.
Nikolai took part in the battle near Stalingrad; later he fought not far
fromLeningrad, where he died a heroic death.
Let me just say a few words about myself. I am a singing teacher and choirmaster by profession; I have been working in this profession for 35 years. I brought up ma children all alone and managed to give him a good education. I do not know, how you are going to imbibe my memoirs, but I am quite sure that you will understand …
Valentina SIMENS (PETRI)
Ost-West-Dialogue N° 11/1997 (the magazine is published in Germany)