“Volga-Volga, Mother Volga …” – this evry melancholic and touching song after motives of the famous Stenka Razin song (“Iz-za ostrova na strezhin”) can often be heard on the Day of Commemoration and Mourning during the ceremonies held in the Novosibirsk reginal House of Russian-Germans.
This open-hearted report given by veterans of the labour army gives expression to the sad remembrances and the pain about the irrevocably lost home grounds along the river Volga, about wasted youth, buried hope and the hard fate the Russian-Germans had to suffer from.
Shortly before the 60th anniversary of the tragic removal of the Russian-Germans from their home grounds into exile, I spent some time in a family of former labour armists and veterans of labour – with Emmanuel and Elsa Sterkel.
I wanted to learn about their biography in greater detail, look closer into their family history and then make a report about it. Those people who went through the hard times of Stalin’s genocide are dying out – one after the other. The Sterkels belong to the few married couples, who still remember those fateful years very well, and they deserve a due recognition of their hard life. Emmanuel is a Volga-German, Elsa comes of the Krim-Germans. Both were removed from their home grounds 60 years ago. A few days before I visited them, Emmanuel Sterkel celebrated his 75th birthday. His wife Elsa is his senior by one year. During our conversation I noticed no signs of mental confusion or any lack of power of recollection with these old and weak people. They still use to speak in their German dialect, which is interlarded with Russian words.
By a merciful stroke of fate Emmanuel and Elsa were reunited in Barnaul, after having been deported from their home grounds and after having spent hard times in the labour army. They founded a family and worked for the “Transmash” machine-building factory for many decades.
Emmanuel Sterkel gives some more details about himself. He was born into a large family of farmers in the steppe village of Hussenbach in 1926. Having finished the German elementary school, he became a tractor driver and worked for the “Komintern” kolkhoz farm in the Autonomous Republic of the Volga-Germans. The young kolkhoz worker had not even completed the 16th year of his life, when the Great Patriotic War broke out.
In 1941 the grain was ripening well in the fields of the German Volga-Republic, promising a rich harvest. Emmanuel was working hard to bring it in. All of a sudden a truck with armed NKVD workers approached the Strekels’ harvesting machine. AN officer ordered them to stop working immediately and go backi to their villages without delay.
By that time soldiers had arrived in Hussenbach, who had been instructed to stay on guard day and night at different places of the village. The frightening news about the resettlement of the Volga-Germans by force was felt like a bucket of ice-cold water emptied over their heads. The last issue of the German Republican newspaper “News” was passed round. It contained Stalin’s ukase of the 28th of September saying that there allegedly was a great number of saboteurs and spies among the Volga-Germans, who were just waiting for the German fascists to arrive.
All Hussenbach was seized with panic. There was a terrible disorder and confusion. Women and children were crying, the watchdogs were barking. Everybody was ordered to drive his cattle to the center of the village and leave it with the NKVD officials within the enclosure behind the church. They mainly confiscated pigs and poultry. The cows remained unmilked and started to low on the second day. It was dreadful having to listen to the imploring calls of the animals for help.
All village people, children and adults, invalids and mothers with babies alike were forced to pack up as soon as possible all necessary pieces of garment, bedclothes and food for their long trip to Siberia. All Volga Germans were taken to the train station of Anisovka by horsedrawn vehicles and from there by train, on freight cars, via the middle Asian republics of the Soviet-Union, to the Altai region. The train reached Slavgorod late in September. Several children and aill people had died on the way. They were buried wherever the train had stopped for a short halt.
At the train station of Slavgorod the deported Volga Germans were distributed to different kolkhoz farms and taken to the villages by rack waggons. The Sterkel family came to the remote village of Verkh-Suyetka, where the chairman of the kolkhoz got them an apartment in some unoccupied house. Instead of the cow they had left in Hussenbach, the Sterkels now received a dairy cow and flour from the kolkhoz farm, which was called “One step ahead”. This was to some extent quite a good support to begin a new life with. A new period of life for the family, life in a little Russian village. Emmanuel and his father worked for the kolkhoz on the basis of so-called “work-days” (unit of work on collective farms; translator’s note), until they were mobilized into the labour army. The father was taken to an NKVD camp in the northern Ural Mountains, where he had to do hard labour under difficult conditions. The daily food ration was utterly meager. During the first months he wrote a fewletters to his family. Early in 1943, however, one of his fellow sufferers informed the family that he had starved to death.
Emmanuel himself happened to get to Barnaul after his mobilization, where they assigned him to work for the newly founded “Transmash” factory as an unskilled worker. At that time there were no electrified means of transport in the town. Emmanuel drove the managers and employees of the factory on two-wheeled carts. Like all Russian Germans, E. Sterkel was under the surveillance of the commandant’s office, where he had to appear for regular checks and registration. He lived in a barracks with other labour armists, who were worked for the “Transmash” factory, as well. In 1944 the driver Sterkel was shifted to the foundry, where he now had to cut metal. The aluminium casted workpieces had to be cut by a mechanic saw. Within short Sterkel had become so familiar with this dirty work that he succeeded in regularly overfulfilling the daily work norm.
Sterkel’s diligence, skill and punctuality did not remain unnoticed among the foundry personal. His portrait kept hanging on the board of honour of foremost people of industry. The factory news paper “For our fatherland” published his photo accompanied by the words: “The best in his line – take him as an example”.
During the forty-five years of his exemplary work for the foundry of the Barnaul “Transmash” factory, Emmanuel Sterkel was awarded dozens of medals, certificates of honour and bonusses.
The conversation with Emmanuel Sterkel was drawing to a close. His wife Elsa, who had also been working for the same foundry for about 30 years, added a word from time to time. I asked her, how her family was now living, how they managed present-day life with all its problems. And she replied: “Our long hard life always remained free of quarrels and discord. When I got married to Emmanuel 50 years ago, we occupied a little room in some barracks. Only after our third child was born, we were assigned a two-room apartment, where we are still living today.
It was hard to raise three children, we hardly managed to make both ends meet. When my husband reached the retirement age, he decided not to quit his job, but was working on for another ten years, instead – in order to increase the monthy income in favour of the family budget. Nowadays, in view of a continuous inflation and exorbitant prices, our pension is just enough to allow us a modest life. Apart from this, I am suffering from a heart disease and diabetes. My husband survived two heart attacks and is ill with silicosis. It is very helpful that my sister regularly sends us all needed medicaments from Germany. She invited us to come to Germany. However, we are unable to decide this question, for our children live in mixed marriages and do not speak German at all. Thus, we are content with what we have”.
Sibirische Zeitung plus No. 10 (40) 10/2001
(newspaper published in Novosibirsk)