Good day, staff members of the editorial department and readers of this newspaper! A lot of time has passed since the day, when I read Igor Taskin‘s publication „Cruelty can never be justified”. However, we must never forget about it, either.
I am writing these lines in order to say thank you to Igor and all people, who, at that time, were ready to help the deported Germans and now remember, how unjust a whole people was treated.
The point is that my 22 year-old Mum was on one of the barges. Accompanied by her 3 year-old son and two sisters-in-law she was swimming in the dark. Straight on the unsettled riverbank, somewhere between Dudinka and Dickson, they were forced to get off the barge and abandoned to their fate. That happened in August, but – applying the standards of the Taimyr region - it was already late autumn, with chilling nights, and during the day temperature would reach just a few centigrade above zero. The only barracks they managed to build in time before the onset of winter was intended for the administration (I have always been completely mystified with what my Mum meant by this definition), while the deportees had to make dug-outs for themselves to live in.
Besides, the women were taught how to catch and carve fish and knot nets. There were almost no men at all, with the exception of brigade leaders and representatives of this aforesaid administration. All German men had already been separated from their families at home, in their previous place of residence, and deported with unknown destination; as it turned out later, they had all been mobilized to the labor army. My grandfather was 15 years old, when he got to the Ural Mountains to work in the labor army, where the men were forced to fell trees under penitentiary conditions; they lived in camps, but there were no watch towers or barbed-wire fences.
In the first Taimyrian winter almost all children died (so did my mother’s son), as well as weak, ill and old people. Nobody gave them any support, nobody medicated them, there simply was no medical aid at all. Some doctor’s assistant came over once a month, bringing along a mix made from fir needles, so that the people could prepare themselves a brew, drink it, thus defending themselves from coming down with scurvy. For comparison only: the labor army, where they had taken the father to, disposed of a medical station with an ordinary, caring, sympathetic doctor, who succeeded in saving the lives of many people (they were just fortunate).
On the Taimyrian riverbank, however, the people could only survive by trying to help each other as much as they could. The brigade leaders there were fishermen from other regions of the USSR, who happened to get to the Taimyr Peninsula by means of an organized selection procedure. I never understood the real meaning of it, but according to Mum’s words the procedure for such a selection looked as follows: a man came to the military registration and enlistment office to volunteer for the front service; they told him that, for the moment, they could do there without him, but that they were looking for people to go to the Taimyr Region to develop the fishing industry. In other words: they were in urgent need of fishermen being masters of their trade.
Among the brigade leaders were rather different people, but all of them behaved themselves quite well towards the Germans. By the way, Mum said that there were not only Germans, but also women from the Baltic States. While the Germans were more or less from the working class and from farming communities, the people from the Baltic were mainly from the upper class, from nobility. Poverty and distress, however, join people, weld them together; and this is why all those women found a common language: the Germans taught the aristocrats how to work hard, while the representatives from the Baltic States showed the Germans how to do finest needlework.
The brigade-leader, a fisherman from the Sea of Azov, an elderly fellow with a Bashkirian family name, once did not only save Mum’s health but even her life. While fishing she had received a serious injury in a heavy storm. Convulsed with pain she passed out, and when she regained consciousness, she prayed to all gods for an immediate death, for she was unable to continue her job, and nobody would give her the permission to get released from hard physical labor. If you did not go out for work, it could easily happen that you fell in the category of those who were shot for refusal to work. The brigadier seeked out to women with an adequate knowledge of medical issues: one of them was from among the Germans, the other one came from a neighboring Dolgan nomad camp.
Many years later Mum reported with a great sense of humor, how these two women, without knowing each other’s language, had examined her wound and then, by means of numerous gestures, discussed and deliberated on what to do best. They did everything in their power and, above all, came to the conclusion that Mum had to stay in bed for at least two weeks.
The brigade leader came to wrap her in a fur blanket, carried her to a boat and took her to the neighboring settlement . Mum tried to demur saying that they would both be shot, when the management got wind of this action, but the man just replied: „When they want to treat is in an inhuman way, this does not mean that we have to behave in the same manner among ourselves. No matter what will happen to us, my little daughter, we must never forget that we are human beings, after all“.
A full week strangers took Mum from one settlement to the next. This was all the brigade leader could risk, for he expected representatives of the authorities to arrive for an inspection, but after this first week Mum was already able to get and be up for a short time. Later, the brigadier found some good reason to send her repair fishing nets, in order to keep her away from hard labor.
One of father’s pallet neighbors was a young fellow, who had been brought to trial for having refused to execute an unhuman order. He did his military service on Taimyr Peninsula. His subdivision was supposed to accompany a gang of Germans to Lake Khasetaika (Lake Khantaika? – note of the website editor) in November (in the middle of winter). The gang was made up by women, children and old people.
The transfer itself involved many losses, but the order stipulated that the soldiers should use their best endeavors to let this German vermin arrive at their final destination. The young fellow and some other soldiers refused to carry out these instructions, for they were aware that they were escorting human beings. And this is exactly the reason for why they were taken to court. It is a remarkable fact, however, that they were not executed, but taken to a camp.
Mum did not tell us all about those times, but growing older I began to understand that in distressful times, women are those who suffer most. First of all, the fear for their children destroys them; secondly, they have to go through physical, moral and sexual violence. I believe that for this very reason my Mum refused for two years to get married to my father; she just did not want to have any dealings with men. And this might also be the reason for her desperate wish to drown the man in charge, who had arrived for an inspection tour; warmed-up by the July sun, he had been as downright silly as to fall asleep at the bow of the barge.
My Mum was the head of the fishing brigade at that time; apart from her, there were seven more women in the unit. And these women would not allow her to saddle herself with sin. They seized her hands and legs whispering to her: „Stand still! Otherwise they will shoot all of us!“ – When the expression of impotent anger had finally disappeared from her eyes, Mum just made a weak movement of the hand and said: „Go to hell! May they continue to twit, mock and ravish you and your daughters“.
With regard to German sabotage Mum had her own theory. Someone had taken a shine to destroy the crop, which in 1941 turned out to be as bountiful as never before. The Germans were deported, and behind the leaving trains huge columns of smoke took to the skies. This was the deed of NKVD workers – they had set light to the wonderful cornfields. This fact was discussed in all details, when Mum’s friends came to visit us. They did not show any self-pity or rant about the sustained losses, but they were not willing to forgive Stalin for the burned down grain, which would have been absolutely essential for the front, as well as for Leningrad. Such a generation this was.
And with regard to the leader … I think there is no nation in the world which might pride itself of not having had any traitors. But I know that many Germans were fighting at the front and in partisan units at a time when their family members were mobilized to the labor army or sent to internal exile. My Mum’s first husband was a German; he did the usual army service, when the war broke out. He survived the war, but was forced to draw up a paper in which he promised to dissociate himself from his wife and his sisters. By the way, one of his sisters was party member.
Well, she later reported, what had been the cause of the columns of smoke, which boatsmen observed on the banks of the Yenisey in the autumn of 1942. It augured badly: grief, humiliation, disease, hurt and mockery, forced labor and death – which often meant salvation. How much hatred must a man feel towards life, in order to be up to putting half of the population of his country into camps and expose people to such tortures!
I write this letter to express my gratitude to all people which supported the deportees – no matter which nationality they were belonging to. Life is a hard and unforeseeable issue. It means: you must learn to resist the adversities of life, recall the lessons of history. Human beings shall respect each other and allow nobody to separate members of a nation. Unfortunately, we are presently expecting poor times ahead.
There is a sentence coming up to my mind – I read it somewhere some time ago: „Apart from the war Russia managed to overcome the hunger crises, but it will not be able to bear up against the challenges of fate with regard to money. Or … will it!?
My Mum is still alive – she is now 92 years old. Obviously, the quack doctors of that time programmed her for a long life. We have to bow deeply to them, to Mum’s brigade leader and all the other good people.
Olga ILINA, Krasnoyarsk
„Krasnoyarsk Laborer“, 16.03.2012