Klara Ivanovna Prokhorova (Dammer) was born in the hamlet of Naibaidel (Neu-Beidek?)
Saratov Region, in 1938.
Her parents worked for the kolkhoz farm. The family lived in a house built of bricks. They had a big farmstead with cows, pigs and sheep and a vegetable garden. Father Ivan Petrovich Dammer, also came from Naibaidel (Neu-Beidek?), he was born in 1908. He attended the church school and completed three years in all. Mother Maria Yakovlevna was born in 1907; she was an illiterate, but later she learned how to write her signature.
There were four children in the family, and all four of them were girls. The eldest sister died 20 years ago.
At present one of the sisters lives in Galanino, the other one in Kasachinsk.
In September 1941 all members of the family were deported. At the moment of their deportation Klara Ivanovna was three years old; hence, there are only very few things she is able to recall.
They took along only the clothes they wore, as well as tableware and some flour. She can very well recall how they were taken away by train and that her father would leave the train at any stop with teakettle in his hand in order to get some boiled or at least some cold water. The wagons were crowded with people.
They spent the winter of the year 1941 in Chelnoky (Kasachinsk District). Her father was a good guter mechanisator; they sent him to Vorokovka to thresh grain. They had machines called “threshers”, however, they did not dispose of any combine harvesters. He liked to be there and decided to have as remove to that place, too.
In 1942 they mobilized father and four of his brothers into the trud-army. After service in this labor army just two of the five brothers were alive, Dad and his youngest brother. The other three starved to death, one of them directly before Klara Ivanovna’s face. Many people who were forced into the labor army died from hunger.
Her mother used to bake bread, dry it, until had turned to rusk and then sent it to the father. She tried her best to support him with all sorts of things, for she recognized, how difficult life was for him. She did not only send him zwieback, but real parcels with all kinds of foodstuffs. And she wrote letters to him, as well; the mail service worked very well, so that letters usually reached their destination. Unfortunately, these letters do not exist any longer. After her father returned home, he told them the following: “They brought us potatoes, which we were supposed to sort through, and they were strictly watching us, fearing that any of us might find a possibility to steel some of them – this is how they behaved towards us, although they were aware of the fact that we almost nothing to eat at that time“. Nonetheless, they found ways and means to carry away at least a few small potatoes. They cut the potatoes in two halves, placed them on top of their feet and then wrapped everything with foot-rags. This is how they were able to take them away unnoticed.
The father lived until the 70th year of his life, his younger brother died at the age of 90. The mother had three sisters; one of them was deported to Kazakhstan with her husband and four children, where the two adults starved. The children were delivered to a children’s home. Afterwards, contacts did not come about again; hence they do not know anything about their further fate.
Another sister was deported to the Altai Region. Later she came to visit us together with her family and we kept in contact, as long as our mother was still alive. Klara Ivanovna‘s grandmother from her mother’s side died before the war. The father lived in another village, from where he was deported, too. They did not put him on the same wagon as the Dammer family, and this is why he happened to get to a different place. Nothing is known about what happened to him afterwards.
The father spent 10 years in the labor army in Khabarovsk. He and his fellow sufferers had to fell trees and work for building lots.
The father returned home in 1952, as it is written in the documents proving the reunion with his family. This happened when Klara Ivanovna was at the age of 14.
Klara Ivanovna says the following about those times: «We had a hard life, a very hard one. Your generation is unable to conceive what we were to experience. We did not have any home of ourselves, not even our separate little corner. We found shelter just by chance, wherever there was some free tiny space to live. Later came the landlords to chase us away, and we quartered with people we did not know. Thus, we plodded until 1952 (when our father returned from the labor army), removed from one corner to the next to have a roof over our heads. One day the family betook itself down town, and we removed into their house. Sometime later we managed to purchase it. This was the very first house of our own. We always had helpful neighbors – they gave us support by handing out useful advice and they commiserated us. They never behaved indifferent towards us, but were very kind and appreciated our mother because of her character – she was a good mother. The people were friendly at that time, there was no burglary.
At most hard times our Mum exchanged everything she possessed against bread, potatoes and other things she was thus able to get hold of. And she only did this for the rason that we could somehow survive.
As I already said, I was able to understand both languages at the time of our
deportation. Meanwhile I forgot all my knowledge of the German language. When
Mum was at work, nobody was taking care of us; we had to stay at home all alone
without Mum, without our grandmother. The mother had taken along a lot of
tableware from Saratov; we smashed many pieces of it during the war, as we were
little children at that time.
I went to school for four years, afterwards I had no suitable clothes to wear;
hence, I did not attend school any longer. I had no shoes. I was saved by the
circumstance that the school building was nearby just eight steps across the
street. Inside the building, in the office, there was a small cast iron stove,
where it was pretty warm. During the breaks all schoolchildren would gather
around this stove instead of fooling about and playing games; after having
warmed up, we went back to the classroom and continued with the lessons.
In spring we liked to play Lapta outside (a kind of rounders; translator’s note.),
when the snow at the south side had already melted, while snow drifts were still
piled up at the north side. The children met there - and they were all
bare-footed. We knew a lot of games. During the winter, however, we sat about
inside the houses. In the course of time our situation slightly improved, and we
finally were able to get ourselves shoes.
I began to work at the age of 14; we had to mow, weed and bundle hay. When I was
18, I got a job on the farm as a milkmaid; I have been working there for 28
years.”
Klara Ivanovna‘s mother was awarded a medal for heroic labor.
After rehabilitation they decided not to return to their home village, for the hamlet, where they had been exiled from, as well as all near-by settlements, had been liquidated 15 years before; they received an indemnification in the amount of 3000 Rubles.
Interview:
Aleksandra PLIGOVKA
(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 .