The fate of the Schwagerus family is one in many thousands typical for the hard lives of the Russian-Germans.
In December Walter Albertovich Schwagerus is going to complete the 84th year of his life. He was born in the village of Karas, Zheleznovodsk district, in the region of Stavropol; there were twelve children. The parents had already died, when, in 1940, he finished the technical school of water transport in Rostov on the river Don and started to work on the steamer “Molotov” as the captain’s second assistant. In October 1940 he was called up into the army for temporary field service – he was transferred to a cavalry regiment in Kirovobad in the Caucasian military district. At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War Schwagerus took part in the military activities on Iranian territory. Then he was disbanded from military service like all the other Sovier Germans, on the basis of a resolution by the State committee of defense, and sent away to Kirov to join a construction gang. They had to lay tracks from Ulyanovsk to Kazan. The work was exclusively done by Germans; the batallion was under the subordination of the People’s Commissariate of Defense; for that reason everything was under strict control and iron discipline, just as it had been in the field forces.
In May 1942 the entire construction batallion was transferred to the Ulyanovsk region for the disposal of the local UVD. From this very moment came into force all kind of rules and laws, as they were generally practised in the camps, and the cruel machinery of reprisals started up. In July some of the people were moved to a sovkhoz named Sakko and Vantsetti to work for the procuring of fodder for a huge herd of cattle. The herd had been permanently driven forward by the Soviet troops, when they fell back from the Ukraine and White Russia, and then concentrated on the territory of the Stalingrad region. However, when the German troops moved forward toward Stalingrad, they began to drive the herd over to the Ulyanovsk region, in order not to lose the cattle, and therefore it became inevitable to procure immense quantities of forage. Thus, everybody was sent there to fulfil the task. There were five camps in the sovkhoz area. They were all in the responsibility of the NKVD, which meant that there were watch-towers and guards, barbed wire fences and other typical characteristics of a camp.
Thus, they kept the Germans born on Russian earth till 1946, when a prisoner transport with true criminals, traitors and people, who had supported the German occupants as police officers, arrived in the place. At that time the Germans had the possibility to regain liberty at least to a certain extent – they were not accompanied by guards anymore, put were put under military command, i.e. they had to appear for registration and periodic checks with the commandant’s office. Women, who had been molibilized into the labour army, were working in the surrounding fields. Among these women Walter Albertovich met his great love, who later became his wife and who he is still living together with. Those people, who lived in special settlements, were to be paid a salary, strictly speaking, but the NKVD did not feel like it. On that account the labour armists were now sent to Tomsk for further “re-education”.
They had to register and appear twice per month for checks with the commandant’s office and were not allowed to search employment of their own will. This went on until 1956. But before the repressed Germans were finally relieved of compulsory registration, they were forced to sign a renunciation, a declaration that they would renounce the return of their property, which had been taken away from them at the time of their deportation, and that they did not have the right to go back to the places which they had been carried off from. The last twenty years Walter Albertovich was working for the automobile works No. 1 and then went on pension, probably with a pension claim basis of 140 (!) years – a well-earned retirement.
At the time of the deportation eight of his brothers and sisters were alive. Not all of them were affected by the displacements of the year 1941. One of the brothers was awarded the order of the famous Military Red Banner for having fought at the Khalkhin-Gol river – he even received it personally out of Zhukov’s hands. He worked in Tomsk for the repair of tanks. Another brother got his head wounded at the west front, became a prisoner of war and stayed in Germany; the third brother worked all his life for the militia. However, he became the victim of a denounciation, was sentenced to 10 years and died somewhere in the Sverdlovsk region. The last two brothers and their families ended up in Karaganda on the basis of the Stalin ukase; they perished in a pit. One of the sisters was first deported to Novosibirsk, afterwards to the Kemerovo region. The youngest sister suffered from a hard lot. She was married to a Russian and, obviously, was not affected by the ukase of the year 1941. However, she and her husband somehow got on occupied territory, she was sent to Germany, happened to get to the British zone and later returned with her husband to Kislovodsk. And this was the moment when the government started to carry out its repressions: both were sentenced to 5 years. Her husband was beaten up to such a degree that he perished; the sistser, after having served her sentence, was exiled to the Kemerovo region.
In spite of her very complicated and hard life she speaks German and Russian fluently, and there is no embitterment in her heart. The most important thing for her is the feeling that Russia is her home country – and this feeling never failed her.
The problems of the Russian-Germans have not been mentioned in our country for a long time, as if they never existed. Although the ukase of the year 1964 took back the entirely unfounded and unjustified charge of treachery, the Russian-Germans were still not allowed to return to the places, from which they had been deported by force and by unlegal means. One year later, in 1965, representatives of the Russian-Germans from all regions of the Soviet-Union went to Moscow, where they appealed to the Supreme Soviet to restore justice; however, these efforts had nothing but negative consequences.
The Germans placed greater hopes in president Boris Yeltsin. However, on the occasion of his visit to the Saratov region in January 1992 he emphatically stated with his “great sense of responsibility”: “There will not be any autonomy! I, the president, can guarantee for it! But I have the following proposal to make: in the Volgograd region there is an unutilized military training area, 20000 hectars in size, and Marshal Shaposhnikov will voluntarily be prepared to put it at your disposal …”. This training area “Kapustin Yar” was opened in 1947, although the war was then over since long. It was used as a testing ground for the release of missiles and aircraft bombs. Even an entirely inexperienced person can easily imagine, how the ground of a military training area looks after 50 years of its existence. An ecological soil analysis carried through by the doctor of technical sciences A.V. Mozgovoy proved: “The earth is permeated and enriched with dangerous materials and objects, which are extremely harmful to human health, among them carcinogenic substances from combustion residues of solid and liquid fuel; they settle in the cells of plants and animals, where they store up their toxic properties for many, many years. How little you love the people, whose president you are, even though the people concerned are not of Russian nationality! All hopes into Boris Yeltsin’s democracy have gone.
A new president came into power – and did things change for the better? In July 2001 W.A. Schwagerus personally appealed to President Putin, but he did not raise any hopes in the people, either, to finally restore an Autonomous Republic of the Volga-Germans.
It is hard to become aware of the fact that the State does not carry out a purposeful and consequent treatment of the problems relating to the restoration of justice towards the Russian-Germans; the State ignores the situation and only cares for the people in an absolutely insufficient way. It is even worse that nobody is willing to give any financial support to the rehabilitation funds, which considerably reduces the extent of aid. Many Germans who, since the signing of the ukase on the 28th of August 1941, have been working for Russia’s wealth and development, live in inconceivable poverty still today, in spite of all the efforts they made, in spite of all the privations they imposed on themselve in order to preserve the cleanness, tidiness and cosiness of their little farmsteads.
All that the Schwagerus family had to go through, all the unfulfilled hopes, expectations and unrealized dreams, did not leave any black spots on their mood and sentiment. They are still feeling hopeful about the future, as they always did. They never ceased to believe in their home country – Russia.
Natalia Bril, chairwoman of the social organization
“Lada – Club of famioies with many children”, Tomsk
Sibiriche Zeizung plus No. 11 (41) 11/2001 (newspaper edited in Novosibirsk)