I would like to tell you about another person yet – one of my grandmother’s friends. Her name is Emilia Ivanovna Gumel. She is the most advanced in age of all Germans living in our village. When he went to visit Grandma Lena (as everybody calls her), she immediately started to explain: “There is nothing good to report about that time!” – Grandma Lena’s tragic life is not out of the ordinary for that time. For many people the repressions seem to be part of history only many, many years later.
Emilia Ivanovna was born in the village of Prokhaus, Marxstadt District, Saratov Region, in 1929. She was resettled to Siberia with her mother Lisa Andreevna and her sister Luisa when she was twelve years old. She will not forget this fateful date, the 8 of September 1941, for the rest of her life. Her father had already died then.
They were given less than twenty-four hours to pack their belongings. On the 7 of September all villagers were convoked and announced that they should get ready to leave within a few hours. Early in the morning soldiers appeared in the village; the order they had received said that they were to deliver the people to the train station. When the arrived there, it suddenly occurred to Emilia that, at home, under one of the trees, she had hidden a bible, which had been passed on within the family from generation to generation. By this time, Emilia was the tenth keeper of the Divine Book. She returned to the village on foot to fetch the book, while her mother and sister kept waiting for her. The train was approaching, but Emilia did not appear. These minutes the mother was in a real state of agony, for she did not want to leave without her youngest daughter. Finally, the girl came running along, the bible tightly pressed to her breast – just a few minutes before the train started to move. The people were loaded on waggons, a bell resounded three times, and then the train moved off.
At the outset, they did not know, where they were taken to. The train reached Novosibirskon the 20 of September. The Gumel family and a few more families were sent to the village of Taradanovo, Suzunsk District. The people were terrified. There, on the Volga, they had been forced to leave their big houses and gardens behind. They had put their hearts and souls in the interior: the backs of the of from wood. They had always carefully mopped and scrubbed them.
The mother was immediately drafted to the labour army. The girls were placed in a state-owned house, which was accupied by a woman and her children. The elder sister, Luisa, went to work for the forestry. Twelve year-old Emilie did not stay out of work, either. In the cold season she and some other children went to catch fish, which were to be sent to the front.
Lisa Andreevna ^took the situation of her children to heart, she was worried sick about them. For that reason she decided to escape. However, militiaman seized her shortly after, and she had to serve a six months’ sentence in prison. While their mother was placed under arrest, the two girls received a letter from Aunt Emma – a friend of mother’s half-sister Maria. The letter said that the woman had died and that she had left two daughters behind. The two sisters instantly agreed to take them in.
The little village was quite far away – about 80 kilometers. The girls set off on foot, they had to walk through deep snow banks. There was a severe frost, but in spite of all adverse conditions Luisa and Emilia managed to reach the settlement. They betook to the commandant’s office, in order to get the permission to take the children with them. The commandant and his wife were very astonished, for the two sisters themselves were yet little children, as well. However, the girls succeeded to convince them that they were almost grown-ups and even had a job. The commandant’s wife provided them with food an allowed them to stay overnight. The two orphan’s names were Nina and Vera. Nina, the elder sister, was three years old, the other one – 11 months. The next morning Luisa and Emilia, instructed by the commandant’s wife, began to handsew clothes for the little ones. Luisa and Emilia contributed their short jackets for this purpose. And, having finished their sewing work, they went all the way back to Taradanovo; it was bitterly cold and they had to pass through deep snow drifts again.
After a certain time the girls were chased out of the apartment. From now on they were forced to spend the nights in barns. The slept with their bodies closely pressed to the cows in order to get and keep warm. Finally, it was spring, and the ground began to thaw. The sister decided to build themselves a dug-out. They received assistance by a woman, who had four children. The two girls, who were just skin and bones, excavated the den and dragged the soil aside. The should have been fed well, because they were at the end of their tether. But were should they take good and sufficient food from, while the country was being at war and they were orphaned? They were physically unfit to do this hard work and quickly exhausted.
The den was about one meter in depth. They built the roof from thin wooden stakes, covered by mud and grass. For this purpose they mixed grass and clay and put it on top of the stakes. In the summertime Emilia went to work for the kindergarten as a nanny.
Several years passed by. The war came to an end. Intrinsically, it seemed, as if they were no able to sort out their lives. However, their mother was still in the labour army. In 1947 she tried to escape for the second time. She just wanted to throw a quick glance at her children, to convince herself that they were alive and in good health. They chased Lisa Andreevna by horse. They tied her to the hay cart and took her back. Of course, she was unable to run aas fast as the horses; she stumbled, fell to the ground, managed to get up, fell to the ground again and was dragged along by the horse. The girls were crying, the neighbours all gathered on the spot, but nobody was able to interfere.
A former militiaman was living right opposite. Having looked out of the window and realized what had happened he went out into the street. Sergei, this was the man’s name, decided to help this unhappy family. He took a horse and followed the soldiers as fast as he could.
Soon-after, he returned with the poor woman, who’s body was full of skin-abrasions and all covered with blood. They sent for a doctor. A woman doctor took care of Luisa Andreevna for three days. She tried to heal the wounds by means of some manganese preparation, the one and only remedy available at that time. After some time the wounds had healed and mother was sent to the labour army once again.
The two sisters were put up by Sergei and his wife. They had two sons. Emilia found a job at the pump house, but the work she had to do was too hard for her weakened organism and her bad state of health. Olga Mikhailovna, the woman at who’s house they were they were living, took pity on them and managed to find her a job in the hospital. Emilia’s task was to iron lab coats and doctors’ overalls. With utmost interest she watched what was going on in the operating room, and very soon was well trained in the use of the different surgical instruments.
One day, the following happened to Emilia. One of the surgeans working for the hospital was a brilliant expert, who had suffered a contusion during the war, as a consequence of which he had lost his sense of hearing. He was to carry out an operation in the presence of student apprentices. They were to assist him with the operation, but they had problems to understand what he said. For that reason Emilia assisted him over the entire period of the operation and reached him out the instruments needed. The operation was successful. And this is how Emilia became the surgean’s assistant.
In 1952 Emilia Ivanovna got married; son Vasiliy was born. Unfortunately, however, the young people’s views of life could not be reduced to a common denominator; they got a divorce. She took her child and left for the settlement of Listvennichniy, Taishet District, Irkutsk Region. Sister Luisa and Lisa Andreevna had removed to this place shortly before, after the latter had been released from the labour army. Finally, the mother was reunited with her daughters!…
In Listvinnichniy Emilia Ivanovna soon met a young man called Yuriy. She got married for the second time. In January 1961 the family removed to the Krasnoyarsk Region – to the village of Beliy Yar, Achinsk District, where they still live today.
By the way, the bible is still being kept within Emilia Ivanovna’s family. This very old, haggled book, the pages of which have been yellowing by thw course of time, has not lost its wondrous power till nowadays.
On the photo – representatives of one of the German families, who were lead into a life of suffering by Stalin’s ukase. Lilia Ivanovna Erlich with her grandchildren. To the very right – Rabella Ernst, she wss in the labour army, served her sentence in Magadan for 10 years. One of the charges: disrespect towards the Soviet flag (from the red piece of cloth, which the Ernsts had affixed to one of the external walls of their house in Stalingrad, she sewed herself a headscarf). Second from the right - Robert Ernst, he served in the labour army, afterwards sentenced to 10 years, for he and a group of other Germans, starving to death, had discovered a waggon full of herrings at the station during the troup deployment. The hearing did not take much time – the judges just convened and immediately read out the sentence. The second beside the grandmother, to the left, is missing. Apart from this there are two of Lilia Ivanovna’s grandchildren on the photo, who now live in Germany.
The above data were prepared and provided by Darya LASUN.
Achinsk District.
Today’s Newspaper, 11.08.2007