Our Republic on the river Volga was liquidated by force – due to false pretenses which were made up out of thin air and by grossly violating the norms fixed in the Constitution. Resettlement and orientation process in the new environment took place under most difficult conditions. Even though there were many exceptions, it very often happened that the resident Siberians met us, the deported Soviet Germans with unveiled hostility. Every now and then we, the children, felt and noticed it, as well. And, of course, we had no reason to assume that living space, food and medical aid were guaranteed to us. Many resettlers lived in dug-outs, basements and other places, which were completely unsuitable to serve as a home. One thought persistently haunted the people’s mind: they wanted to eat. Everybody fed himself with what he was able to procure, to find: working people received their ration, but those, who did not work, were exposed to death from starvation.
People had hardly succeeded to overcome the first shock, when they had to face the second. On the 10th January 1942 the State Committee of Defense passed the decree „About the mobilization of German men to the labor army“, which you cannot recall without a shiver. These mobilized Germans formed up brigades in camps belonging to the field of responsibility of the NKVD. As we today know, labor and living conditions did not differ from those prevailing in fascist concentration camps – quite often they even surpassed them in inhumanity.
Soon new hardship befell the resettlers – the complete mobilization of all German women at the age of 18 to 45. The labor armists lived along with prisoners and were permanently accompanied by security patrols. For the prisoners life was even slightly easier - they were supplied by the State and received a better food ration, while trudarmists were forced to earn their living from hard labor.
The German resettlers and trud armists were doomed; basically, the civilized, cultured, pain-staking and absolutely law-abiding German nation within the country, within the former USSR, was supposed to be exterminated. The Soviet Germans lost their homes, the surroundings they had been so familiar with, all their properties they had acquired in the course of time by working from morning to night. They also gradually suffered the loss of their national traditions, culture and language. But in spite of all this horror, all these abasing situations, we, the Russsian Germans succeeded in keeping our national self-confidence and mentality. Those who survived Stalin’s communistic deathly masticator have used their best endeavors to pass their typical national characteristics, their intellect on to their children. Germany has shown public penitence in front of the people because of its fascist structures at that time and the misery caused by World War II. As we know, representatives of the country are trying hard to make use of all available funds in order to render financial aid to the Russian Germans. But unfortunately, the Communist Party is not unrepentant for the dirty deeds of their predecessors, which lead to the extermination of the German people in Russia by use of force. In any case, I have not yet heard any statement of our today’s communist leaders regarding this issue, but maybe they just have the opinion that crimes committed by their predecessors in office at that time are not their business. From the ruling powers themselves we have not noticed any consequent actions, either, no indication of their principal preparedness to fully rehabilitate the Russian Germans, no efforts – even after so many decades have passed since then – to see and acknowledge the sins committed at that time and to show one’s willingness to help an entire people. They should particularly treat the following problem: till this day nobody ever considered the possibility of developing an obliging medical treatment program for former trudarmists, who lost their health in the camps.
The mere thought about what I had to go through at the age of 9 in one of the labor camps in Vorkuta together with my mum makes me shudder. Children were not allowed to be taken along. But someone hid me in a crate; hence, after a long trip in a freight-car, I got to Vorkuta with all the others. Upon arrival, the women were put in barracks, from which prisoners had been evacuated shortly before. During the first time I still had to hide away, but later the representatives of the camp authorities, as well as guards, ceased to pay attention to the presence of children. Since we had not been registered in the lists, nobody had made any arrangements to consider us with regard to food rations. As if we were not existing at all; and since this was just how it was – the camp authorities had no reason to care for problems and anxieties of the children. For many months we, the children, had to stay inside the barracks, for we had no clothes; apart from this, we did not want to run into any of the representatives of the camp authority. In our barracks there were five children like me; in the winter we heated the round iron stoves – fortunately, there was coal, helped with the cleaning of the rooms and took care of the numerous sick persons. A workday in the trudarmy comprised 12 hours, which was beyond people’s strength, the more since they only received a very sparse food ration; the people were hungry all the time and lived in frightfully cramped conditions. At rare intervals only we had the possibility to take a bath; lice were a torture – there was not the slightest chance to escape from them. They were in lack of even the simplest garments, which might have been suitable for an existence, not to mention really warm clothes; the people contracted frostbites and even perished by cold. Hence, the poor people did not just experience unbearable physical torments every day, but also humiliations and mockery on the part of the guards.
My mum was 25 years old at that time. She was a beautiful woman. She would never completely eat up her food ration, but shared every bite with me. The other women also fed their children from their own ration. We used to sleep a lot, in order to avoid the hungry feeling at least for a certain time. Early in 1945 mum gave birth to my sister and somehow managed to make ends meet. My little sister solely drank breast milk, she did not know about any other kind of food. Other women gave birth to children, too, but in most cases the little ones died shortly after. When my sister was one year old, the released mum from the labor army. However, she merely received a confirmation about the time she had been staying in this trudarmy; she was not given any money to go, no food – nothing! Nonetheless, we were very glad and happy of having been released from hell. One year after my sister had been born, the authorities finally issued the birth certificate in her name; this was the basis for her becoming a legal human being.
Not all trudarmists succeeded to survive the years of camp detention; many were killed. And those, who were released in the end and returned, were seriously ill; they had been mutilated in a physical and moral way.
I have seen all this with the eyes of a child, I have learned the functioning of this bloody masticator the hard way. For us, the Russian Germans this horror of the past is a wound that will never heel up. I will always bear in remembrance the people I associated with at a time, when we lived under such adverse, inhuman conditions. A lot of mischief befell them – bitterness, humiliations, the loss of family members and friends. But hey always found good words themselves, they believed in God from the bottom of their hearts and brought up their children with never-ending affectionateness.
Whenever I visit the Catholic church, I say a prayer and bring along fresh flowers, which I place at the memorial stone – in commemoration of the victims of political repressions - for those who did not return home, who deceased, who remained in one of the numerous camps, who had to learn resettlement by force, internal exile and detention in the labor army the hard way.
May we commemorate them forever.
Yuriy Knels, retiree
Siberian Newspaper plus N° 8 (26), 8/2000 (Newspaper edited in Novosibirsk)