Russia’s grief-stricken history is the tragic fate of those, who became the victims of deportation, oppression and reprisals. Late in August we will commemorate a sad date in the history of our fatherland. In accordance with the ukase of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated the 28 August 1941, hundreds of thousands of Russian-Germans were deported from their places of residence and forcibly resettled in different remote regions within the country. They lost all their property, the roof over their heads and the right to lead a dignified life. Based on this ukase 420 families were sent to Kuragino district, about 2000 individuals altogether.
Without any exception all Germans – town’s people, as well as the rural population, and even members of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the Young People’s Communist League – were transferred. The NKVD of the USSR was responsible for this resettlement action. Most of the deportees happened to get to Kazakhstan (125000 individuals) and Novosibirsk Region (100000). According to fixed quotas, 75000 came to Krasnoyarsk Territory. Among them was the family of Filip Schlundt from the village of Bauer, Kamensk Canton, Saratov Region.
The head of the family, who had occupied the post of a manager of the village store, was accused of anti-Soviet political propaganda. He was executed on the decision of a “troyka” in 1938. Six centuries later he was rehabilitated by the public prosecutor’s of Krasnoyarsk territory. At the time when he was arrested, he had to leave his wife Elisabetha Adolfovna an five children behind: Ganna (Hanna, born 1926), Maria (born 1928), Jakob (born 1930), Amalia (born 1939) and Emma (born 1935).
Hanna Filippovna recalls: Even before the deportation we had a hard life. Several years in succession there had been serious drought damages, people even starved to death, because there was no grain. But nevertheless all of us went to school. On the eve of our deportation, in June 1941, I finished the seven-class school with full marks in almost every subject.
Together with other neighbours, our family was carried off on the 15 September. We had to leave everything behind: our house, the vegetable garden and all the cattle. Nobody gave any explanation: they just forced us to get on freight cars and then transported us away. The people were only allowed to take along what they would badly need in the near future: a few clothes and foodstuffs, which, however, were used up within a couple of days. Only when the train stopped at the stations, a thin soup was sometimes taken to the waggon in buckets, but it was by far too little to feed so many hungry people.
Th waggons were overcrowded. Due to this frightfully cramped conditions many people became ill, died. Pregnant women had to give birth in these insanitary conditions. In Kazakhstan eleven waggons were uncoupled, the remaining continued their trip. Only eight days and nights later we reached Abakan. From there our family, as well as others, were sent to the village of Dzirim, Shalobolinsk village soviet.
Today we may say that the deportations of the Germans from the Volga region were carried out according to a well-contrived plan; it was no action decided on the spur of the moment. The NKVD workers acted in strict accordance with their orders, without using physical violence, for the shocked people bowed to the inevitable and resigned themselves to their fate. In Kuragino District the resettlement of the deported Germans was performed by the Detlovsk, Griasnukhinsk, Ponachevsk an other village soviets. Unfortunately, it was not possible to obtain useful documents from the archives about how the resettlement was organized in details; in some documents (not in the accounts book), however, we can find the following notes: put in Bruch – 5 persons, - Birich – 8, Kaiser – 4, etc. A considerable part of the resettlers were sent to farms of the “Kuraginskiy” sovkhoz or the “Zolotoprodsnab” state farm, belonging to the Artemovsk goldmine (today the settlement of Roshchinskiy).
Hanna Filippovna continues: Upon our arrival in Dzhirim, they accomodated us in an open barn. There was neither an oven nor a door. We had no warm clothes, and the garments we had additionally taken along had already been changed against foodstuffs. Somehow mother managed to build a small makeshift oven from stones. It only gave little warmth, but it was suitable to cook meals on it. The following day they sent all elder people to thresh grain, for it was just harvest time. We had to work hard. It was hard physical labour, which the men had usually done before the war broke out. Even our youngest brother, Jakob, he was eleven years old at that time, had to transport stable manure from the farms to the fields by horses. At nighttime all family members would busily knit large shawls, which they later exchanged against potatoes.
At that time there was a four-class school in the village. The lessons were held by a sole woman teacher. The children of the exiled Germans, however, did not go there during the first year.
After all Germans had been deported from the Volga Region, the government passed a series of regulations, which legitimated their mobilization into the labour army and their use for forced labour projects for the whole period of war. The trud armies were a special appearance of that time in the history of our country, which united elements of active duty, productive labour and the GULAG system into one huge institution.
On the 7 October 1942 the government passed an ordinance of the State Committee of Defense (No. 2383 – strictly confidential) “About the additional mobilization of Germans for the benefit of the national economy of the USSR”; in accordane with this ordinance all men between 15 and55, as well as women in the age of 16 to 45, were called up into the trud army.
- The winter went over. Early in the summer the began to fetch the first resettlers into the labour army, - G. (H.) Schlundt continues her report.
- I had already completed the 16th year of my life and was in possession of a passport. In October of the same year my mother and I were delivered a call-up order. It was a terrible tragedy. They came to collect all Germans fit for work from each village and sent them to Kuragino. They could not go further to another place, because huge ice floes had piled up on the river Tuba, and there was no way to get through. We found temporary accomodation in unfamiliar houses, with unknown locals. On the 21st November we were driven together once again. All my brothers and sisters were tied to our mother. She was the only person they had complete confidence in! What were they going to do without her? Mother fell down insensible. She only regained consciousness, when everybody was already sitting on the sleigh. She went down to her knees and began to pray to God for help, remaining in this position for the whole rest of the trip.
In Kuragino good people helped her to write a petition, in which was mentioned that she had left behind four children unattended and that she herself was suffering from pains in her eyes, since she had undergone an eye operation some time ago. The petition helped her out of this terrible situation. She was allowed to stay. But this permission was, of course, an exception, for they sent away all women with children, who were more than three years old. The little ones were either given away to relatives or taken to an orphanage.
- While I was working for the labour army, - Hanna Filippovna continues, - I lived in the town of Ishimbai, in the Bashkirian ASSR. At first we had to build a factory and therefore dug out the fundament. Caused by the permanent contact of the skin with dirt and mud, the prisoners suffered from incurable running ulcers and became infested with lice. Apart from this, the prisoners were very poorly fed. Later they assigned us to raft timber. We lived on the rafts in huts covered with leaves. In the course of time the trunks became saturated with water and began to sink, so that our huts got flooded. Those, who had lost their strength were assigned to take care of the hotbeds or work for the hothouses of the nearby farm or market garden attached to the camp…
Thus, the deported Germans did ehavy labour with an all-out effort, under conditions practically equating with slave labour. In spite of all these untoward events and conditions of life they held out and even established word records. The head of the NKVD administration of Krasnoyarsk Territory, I. Semenov, gave a written report to the department of special settlements of the NKVD of the USSR in February 1946, in which he mentioned: “Many resettlers fulfil and overfulfil the norms. They work very hard, indeed”.
Time went by and, little by little, the attitude towards the deported Germans was changing. For shock work they were even awarded decorations and medals. The names of exemplary workers are well known to the whole district: N. Gumenschaimer (swineherd), R. Fertich (combine driver), F. Birich, A. Schrainer, I. Stil (mechanization workers) and many others.
- All workers were called together in the club, - she recalls. – Guards were placed at the doors, and then the head of the commandant’s office read out an order that we would have to stay here for life. We were all forced to sign this document.
In 1949 Hanna Filippovna got married, but she was not allowed to assume her husband’s family name at that time and, principally, zthe resettlers were not allowed to get maaried, either. They only received the official permission in 1957. The special resettlers remained under the supervision of commandants’ offices until 1955. In 1956 they received passports and were handed over their working papers. Then they were told that they could now leave for any place they chose. Hanna Filippovna decided to return to Kuragino with her husband and son. Later her mother also went to live with them.
Hanna Filippovna’s sisters live in our Krasnoyarsk Territory, brother Jakob left the country and moved to Germany. Hanna Filippovna was confered on the title of a “Veteran of labour”. She was thanked officially many times for having done good work. She is making use of the privileges and reduced prices granted to rehabilitated Germans (a corresponding government order was passed in 1955) and received a compensation for her confiscated property.
- However, I am not able to be happy about that, - she ends her report. – I was broken by fate, all my health is gone, and my eldest son died, when he still was a child.
Her tears are dropping on the carefully kept document certifying her completion of the seven-year school in the village of Bauer, a geographic map of the German Volga Republic and a couple of photos, which have remained in her possession since 1907, the time, when Adolf Bruch passed his military service.
Irina Becher, manager of the Kuraginsk affiliateof the Center of German
Culture,
Antonia Kaliuga, head of the Archives of the District Administration.
“Tubinsk News”, No. 145-148 (9669), 09.09.2004