Karl Friedrichovich Diener was born in the hamlet of Turuchansk, Turuchansk District, Krasnoyarsk Territory, on the 7th January 1949. His parents were the exiled Germans Friedrich Karlovich and Yekaterina (Katharina) Friedrichovna Diener (born Eckel).
His parents, who came from the Autonomous Republic of the Volga-Germans – met in faraway northern Turukhansk towards the end of the year 1949, when they were working for a fishery collective. The families of Friedrich Diener and Yekaterina Eckel shared the fate of several thousands of Soviet Germans, who – according to the Ukase of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet dated the 28th August 1941- were deported from the ASSR of the Volga-Germans to Siberia and Kazakhstan.
Not long before the Great Patriotic War broke out, young Friedrich Karlovich was mobilized to the Red Army. The ukase about the liquidation of the German autonomy reached him, while he was fighting at the front. Practically immediately - in September 1941 – the German soldiers in the Red Army were withdrawn from among the armed forces, lost their military ranks, were made up in labor units and transported away to construction projects of the GULAG / NKVD. Friedrich Diener came to one of these gangs of the Norillag, too. Those who happened to get into the „Trud Army“, were only released after the war. At that time Friedrich’s family had been scattered over several regions of the country: the Kazakh SSR, the Omsk Region and the Krasnoyarsk Territory. Under the conditions of special resettlement, which factually meant the irrevocable linking of the exiles to their new places of residence, any reunion of the isolated families appeared to be utterly problematic. After his time in the labor army, Friedrich Karlovich settled down in Turukhansk, were he became acquainted with his wife to-be.
The family of Yekaterina Friedrichovna Eckel got to the Krasnoyarsk Territory in September 1941. In the Volga Region her big family had lived near the town of Engels. The deportation of the 20 year-old Yekaterina, her mother and four brothers and sisters took place all in a hurry. Later she recalled: „We left home in the clothes we were wearing at that time; we did not manage to get anything packed up in time and take along any of our belongings“. They had to leave behind their house, farmstead, furniture and personal chattels. They did not even have enough time to bag some of the most personal belongings. According to Yekaterina Eckel’s information, the trip to Siberia took very long; the people were hungry: several people in the wagon died, the individuals who mostly suffered from this situation were children. In the autumn of 1941 the family arrived in the hamlet of Balakhta, Krasnoyarsk Territory, but as turned out only later, they were not supposed to stay there for a longer period of time. Already in the summer of 1942 she, just as many other families of special resettlers, was deported to Turukhansk District, in order to work for the commercial fishing industry.
The remembrances of Yekaterina Friedrichovna about the period of life in Turukhansk approve the maxim of the people working for the fishing collective – they provided vast quantities of fish for the state by doing piece-work, but they themselves were weak from hunger - «they were not even allowed to take away a single fish tail».
Friedrich Diener und Yekaterina Eckel got to know each other at work – on the fishing collective. Between 1948 and 1956 seven children were born to them in Turukhansk. In 1950 the head of the family worked as a tractor driver. Step by step the young couple acquired a cow, planted a kitchen garden und got a little house of their own. Although the family accustomed herself to the new surroundings and conditions of the Far North, the Dieners removed to Yekaterina’s parents in Kazakhstan soon after the beginning of the rehabilitation process in March 1958, and early in the 1960s to relatives of the husband in the Omsk Region.
Young Karl Diener memorized this one year spent in the Omsk Region with positive impressions, for the family came to the German village of Sharvatai. Obviously, this settlement had been founded by German colonists early in the 20th century, when a certain part of the ethnos set off for West-Siberia in search of land and a happier life. At school all teachers, with the exception of its director, were Germans; however, lessons used to be held in Russian. On the whole, owing to the authentic language milieu, Karl spoke German very well. Preservation of the mother tongue within the Diener family was also favored by the circumstance that the parents were always using the German language. In 1963 they finally returned the Krasnoyarsk Territory, settling in the village of Sakharovka in Kazachinsk District.
Having graduated school he trained as a driver; afterwards he was working in this profession for many years – for the Kazachinsk forestry. In Sakharovka he git acquainted with his wife to-be – Aleksandra Petrovna Kruglova. She worked at school as teacher of mathematics for more than two years.
Now the Diener family is in well-deserved retirement. They rejoice in their daughter and their growing-up grand-daughter. In spite of their hard and challenging childhood, which fell upon the first decade after the war, they were ready to share their remembrances after what they, as well as their parents, had to go through.
Karl Friedrichovich recalls day-to-day school life, when his class was entirely „international“: it was made up by Letts, Lithuanians, Kalmyks, Kirghiz and Russians. He expressly points out that no serious conflicts arose due to due different national affiliation. Aleksandra Petrovna has the opinion that both the children of the resettlers and the locals behaved in a very modest way, and she confirms that neither of them tried to especial excel. Practically all inhabitants were affected by the deficits in foodstuffs and clothing at the beginning of the 1950s, irrespective of the nationality they belonged to. Admittedly, the kirghiz differed in their appearance, since they would always wear their national frocks and tubeteikas (cap; translator’s note) in all weathers. Exiles of the Baltic countries behaved slightly different from the others. During the lunch break they almost never joined the other workers, after work they immediately hurried home and always tried to work together in one group. Late in the 1950s starting with the rehabilitation process with the Baltic resettlers, there was a mass leave for their original home countries. And early in the 1990s former resettlers returned to Siberia, in order to get the mortal remains of their relatives, who had died during exile. On the public cemetery in Sakharovka there was an unofficial area for Lithuanian and Latvian graves in the 1950s. They differed from others by high crosses, which were later removed, as well.
Nowadays, Karl Friedrichovich makes use of the German language just in very few cases, when he drops some expressions while talking to his sisters. He says that he is German, but it is more or less the official variant. Although some of his relatives left for Germany in the 1990s, Karl Friedrichovich has no illusions about a „happy German life“. Some of his fellow countrymen, who left for their historic home country, came back some time later. They were unable to find their feet in Germany – life is ruled there by different patterns of life. Moreover, they had not succeeded in getting jobs in accordance with what they had been trained in Russia. People, who had previously worked as teachers or physicians, were offered unskilled jobs in German factories and now had to earn their money this way. «Hence, I am not going to leave this place – I will go nowhere“, Karl Friedrichovich said. His mother died in 2002, having outlived her husband by more than 30 years. She did not make use of the possibility to leave for Germany, too, since she had meanwhile “settled in” in Siberia. She was of the opinion that she should not stay here for the rest of her life.
Aleksandra Petrovna was born in a Russian family. She likes to recall how Karl Friedrichovich‘s mother showed her how to cook typically German meals and taught her how to produce kribli und riwelkuchen. In their Siberian interpretation, Aleksandra Fyodorovna notes, they were even more delicious. However, maultaschen (pasta squares) made German-style from local products, had a very special taste. German meals were always cooked at Easter and at Christmas. Jekaterina Friedrichovna was a religious person, who observed Catholic feasts at home, although she did not do this in public. Unfortunately, the handwritten German bible does not exist anymore – they had brought them along from the Volga at that time.
The Diener family recalls the complementarity of the Siberian people, who were willing to share their foodstuffs with the deported families in spite of the fact that the war was on and that they were suffering from hunger themselves. Aleksandra Petrovna‘s grandmother – Aleksandra Ivanovna – literally saved a Volga-German family, who had been deported from the Kazachinsk District in the winter of 1942: she cooked potatoes, baked flat cakes and then offered them to the hungry family with three little children. During the following years they tried to show her grandmother their gratitude for all her care and support. In the 1950s an exiled physician from Leningrad lived in the grandmother’s house, a very civilized and well-educated man, as Aleksandra Petrovna recalls. He taught her how to carefully listen to operas, and the locals would always consult him, when they were in need of medical help. Admittedly, he was not able to work in Siberia in accordance with his professional education – in Siberia he was forced to perform tasks for the forestry sector.
Between 1990 and the early 2000s Yekaterina Friedrichovna Diener and her children were rehabilitated. Nowadays the history of this German family is being continued on Siberian land …
Interviewed by: Yelena Zberovskaya
(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 .