Yekaterina Yakowlewna Bekker was born in the Autonomous Republic of the
Volga-Germans in 1938. Her family lived not far from the city of Engels in the
village of Knanfeld (Gnadenfeld, today Talowka). Herparents – Jakob and Amalia
Kisselman(n) as well as other Volga Germans were announced in August 1941 that
they were supposed to be exiled.
Yekaterina Yakovlevna cannot tell anything about how the resettlement action proceeded, but her mother Amalia reported that the father another dozen of German fellows were taken away directly from the train and immediately sent away with unknown destination. It was rumored that they had been mobilized in the trud army. These rumors had come up, because no further news were received from or about Jakob Kisselman, after he had been separated from his family in the train. Even today, seventy years later, Yekaterina Yakovlevna has no details about his fate. Little Katrin (this is how the interviewed was called by her parents) arrived in remote Siberia with her mother only. There final destination, where they were settled by force, was the village of Belaya Rechka (Ehite Little River; translator’s note.) in Kazachinsk District, Krasnoyarsk Region.
In the new place of residence Amalia and her daughter settled in a dug-out, which was lighted by the aid of a little paraffin lamp. With the exception of clothes they had not managed to pack in time and take along more useful things from the Volga. They did not know where the other relatives had been taken to. Several years later it turned out that some of them had been deported to Kazakhstan. The mother was working for the kolkhoz: she planted cabbage and potatoes, harvested hay etc. Besides Germans, representatives of other ethnic groups which had been deported to Siberia lived in Belaya Rechka – Belorussians, Kalmycks, Ukrainians and so on.
The school was ten kilometers away from seven year-old Little Katrin’s habitation, and she had nothing appropriate to wear, I order to cover the distance. Therefore she was unable to attend school. Only much later she learned how to read and write – when she was a mother herself and her own children went to school. Since her early days she had been working for the sovkhoz, storing hay and sewing firewood.
In 1958 Yekaterina Yakovlevna got married to the young German Ivan Augustovich Bekker, who was also from a resettler’s family from the former ASSR of Volga-Germans. Hence, she moved to Kazachinskoe, where she took up a job in a brick works: she stood at the cutting machine, pushed trolleys and baked bricks. After the birth of her children Yekaterina Yakovlevna began to be more concerned with her household. She brought up five sons. She had no help from anyone: her husband‘s parents had a very moderate life, and mother Amalia had already died late in the 1950s. Amalia Andreevna did not leave her daughter any heritage behind – as she explained, she had lived in grinding poverty. The most important thing Yekaterina recalls is her mother’s maxim „to listen to one’s conscience and to not swindle“. Ivan Augustovich’s parents also died early. His father suffered from the injuries he had contracted in the “trud army”.
Yekaterina Yakovlevna does not speak German at all. She is joking that basically you cannot even call her a German at all, because she is not able to speak her mother tongue. Without much doubt life in an environment, where a different language was spoken and the lack of direct relatives lead to the loss of her mother tongue. Even the fact that she later lived in her husband’s family, where the use of the German language was common practice, could not restore her language abilities. Associating with her husband she made use of the Russian language, which also became the main language for Ivan Augustovich in Siberia, although – compared to his wife – he was at least able to speak in his mother tongue.
Yekaterina Yakovlevna had a life full of difficulties and adverse conditions. Her husband died in 1980; afterwards she had to manage bringing up her children all alone. Two of her sons died in Kazachinskoe in different years. Yekaterina Yakovlevna worked as a technician for nursery schools and for the editorial department of the local newspaper. Nonetheless, in spite of all the difficult conditions of life, she was never desirous to leave the village to return to her historic home – not even when her brother sent the corresponding invitation, after he had left for Germany himself in 1990.
In 1980 Yekaterina Yakovlewna undertook a trip to the Volga Region, where one of her sons had removed. When she came there, the most surprising thing for her was that the German place names did not exist anymore.
From her husband’s side there is only one relative left – a cousin called Nina Nikolaevna Saifulina. She added a couple of facts to Yekaterina Yakovlevna‘s report, even though it was not really much she was able to tell us. Her mother – Maria Adamovna Bekker, who had also been deported from the Volga Region – spoke rather little about their life on the River Volga and their exile. However, relatives used to gather in her mother’s house, talk in their mother tongue and sing songs.
Yekaterina Yakovlevna Bekker now recalls her childhood, the hard life of her mother, who happened to get to Siberia with her little daughter without any means of existence. The German roots have practically been eradicated from memory, the fate of our interviewee is intrinsically tied to the Siberian village of Kazachinskoe, where almost her whole working life took place.
(AB – remarks by Aleksei Babiy, Krasnoyarsk „Memorial“Organization ) Ninth expedition of the Krasnoyarsk "Memorial“ Organization and the Pedagogic College in Yeniseysk, Vorokovka-Kasachinskoe-Rozhdestvenskoe 2014.