Mournful lessons of history
There were six children in our family. Two of them died during famine in the Volga Region in 1933, another child starved in 1944 – this happened after they had been resettled to Siberia.
Until the outbreak of the war our family lived in the Saratov Region, on the Muchino sovkhoz. Father was a combine harvester driver, mother worked for the field kitchen as a cook.
The eldest brother was born in 1934, the younger one in 1939 and I in 1937. All three of us went to the kindergarden, which was situated close to the field kitchen. When the war broke out, the government started to resettle all Germans. The forced us to get on a board a train, where we were put into waggons, which were actually întended for the transportation of cattle; they were all over dirty and shabby, and there were no toilets at all. We were only allowed to take along a few belongings; the whole campaign was carried out in a great hurry, so that we did not even manage to pack and take along the most important family documents.
We had to leave behind our house, our cattle, our land. Later we learned from letters of our relatives that, after we had left the place, cows, sheep and dogs had been straying throught the village roaring and barking dor a long time yet. It must have been a horrible scenery ...
We spent a long time inside the locked waggons; the train stopped very often, as the conductor had to let past by quite a gtreat number of trains with soldiers heading for the front.
We trip took 24 days; then, finally, we found ourselves in Siberia. They took us up to Kansk and then sent us to the big village of Kurai in the Dzerzhinsk District. In the beginning we lived in a bath-house, later we were to remove to the caretaker’s cottage next to the school building. Thus, we more or less vegetated for about two years. Mum was working for the timber industry. One day the came for my father and mobilized him to the trudarmy to Ingash; he was forced to work as a lumberjack, too. We. The children, liked to linger in some little garden, but they turned us out saying that this was, because we were Germans. We sat about at home all alone. Some of the local people, enrooted in their village since long, met us, the Germans, with rapt attention, and the little children were even looking for horns on our heads, for they had heard that German fascists were caricatured with such horns. Two years later we removed to the Abansk District, to the village of Berezovka. Before our departure the people in Kurai would not allow us to collect at least a few potatoes to take along to our new place of residence. In Berezovka we were quarted inside the school building at first, afterwards in a baracks which resembled to a chicken house. The rroms were not furnished at all. We had to go and get timber to build ourselves some bedstead. They placed an oven at our disposal, which had no door. When we asked them to assemble such a door, they answered back: „Why don’t you ask your Hitler to do so....“.
In the very first years they would insult us calling as fascists. Another serious problem was the existing language barrier, for we spoke Russian very badly. Mum was working as a milkmaid, plasterer and lumberjack; she even had to remove the trunks with the aid of oxen, wherby she sank into the snow up to her hips. We, the children, were forced to working, as well. From the age of 7 or 8 each of us had to fulfill some job. We weeded pest plants in the fields, provided hay, harvested potatoes and mangold. The two brothers made an apprenticeship as carpenters. And I went to milk cows on a farm at the age of 14.
Later I became the best milkmaid of the region. I was even sent to attend the Exhibition of National Economic Achievement in Moscow. This was in 1959. I was also working as a construction worker for 11 years. Then I gor married and gave birth to three sons. All of them are married. And I have two grand-sons and two grand-daughzters.
I have been living in Sosnovoborsk since 1981. My husband and I found a job on the poultry farm, where I took care of the chicken. The people could look at my portrait on the board of honour. I went into retirmenet at the age of 60. We took my father from the village in. At that time he was almost 92. None of our relatives in the village were alive. The elder son and his big family – children, grandchildren and grand-grandchildren – left the country to stay in Germany. Mum and her brother died in the village. They were buried there. My father died two years ago, just two days before his 95th birthday.
We all had a very hard life. Finally, our life in Siberia connected us to those, who at first showed hostility and mistrust to us.
I am in possession of a certificate of rehabilitation. And I was invested as veteran of labour.
„Sosnovoborsk Newspaper“, N° 49 (251), 18.12.2008