The German family FRÜSORGER lived in the village of GRIMM, canton KAMENSK, Autonomous Republic of the Volga Germans. There were over 700 farms in GRIMM with about 15000 inhabitants. There were the big "Record" works, where they produced lathes, a weaving-mill and the branch of a Moscow factory called "Red Proletarian".
The evening before the announcement of the decree, army course participants from the Charkow military college were taken into the village. They found accommodation in the school. They did not know, why they had been brought there.
Approximately on 10.09.41 the Communists deported:
The two elder sons were not among them. Karl Karlovich FRÜSORGER (1916-1941?) was a teacher. At the beginning of the war he disappeared in the Leningrad region without a trace.
Alexander Karlovich FRÜSORGER (1918-1961), a physician, was called up into the army in spring 1941 (see below).
The inhabitants were transported from GRIMM to the landing-stage in SOLOTOYE by carts, shipped on barges and taken up the River Volga, until they reached the landing-pier in UVEK near SARATOV. They were to leave the barges and driven onto a train. The train passed through Chumkent, Alma-Ata, Novosibirsk, and at the beginning of October the deported men and women arrived in Krasnoyarsk. Many wagons were uncoupled at Yenissey railroad station and two at SYKOVO. There the deportees were put into carts and taken to SYKOVO, passing on their way the surrounding villages. The FRÜSORGER family came to the little village of DODONOVO, district of SOVYETSK (today BERYOSOVSK), on the right bank of the Yenissey, further down from Krasnoyarsk and Beryosovka.
The deportees were divided up and sent to the different farmhouses. The villagers were extremely astonished that, evidently, the Germans had no horns (there was such an idea of the Germans). Very soon, already in November, Karl Karlovich, Jakob and Robert were asked to come to the District Military Comitee (in Beryosovka) and directly sent into the "Trud-Army". Who at this time knew, what this actually meant?
All three of them came to the BASSTROY (construction area of the BOGOSLOVSK aluminium works in the SVERDLOVSK region). The father did not return from there alive.
In summer 1942 they started to send away deported women and adolescents to Dickson, Dudinka and Chatanga. They probably would have sent Konstantin as well at that time, however, the head of the kolkhoz succeeded in convincing the military authorities to keep all those, who worked well with bulls.
In November 1942 they again started sending people into the "Trud-Army" - not to the North anymore, but to the petrol and natural gas producing industries in Southern Ural. This time they also arrested Konstantin . On their way they did not get anything to eat, and it was a long journey. The wagons were swarming with lice. Towards the end of December the train reached BUGURUSLAN (CHKALOVSK region, today ORENBURG). At night-time they were driven out of the wagons and taken away into different directions.
The group Konstantin had got into, was taken to the banks of the River KINEL on that night, where - earlier - near the village of STEPANOVKA, in an oak forest, had been situated the military summer camp of "KERTCH".
Straw huts, half-built into the ground, without floor and windows, have remained from the camp. At that time they served as housing for those, who had arrived there, most of them adolescents. There was a stove in the little dugout (semlyanka), where Konstantin lived cramped together with another 15 boys, all born in 1926 or 1927. There were no fences and no guards, but they were accompanied to work in convoy, whereby the escort guards lead the column. They were supposed to dig excavations for the petrol reservoirs near STEPANOVKA.
The construction area was owned by the "Buguruslan Petrol" Trust. At work they made use of the usual tools, such as spades, crowbars, pickaxes, wheel-barrows and panniers.
The dugouts (zemlyankas) were swarming with lice. They heated water in a kettle until the room was full of steam, and in the end there remained a layer of dead lice thick as a finger. Only in spring 1943 they built baths, but until that time they used to rub some ointment on themselves as protective measure against lice and in order to get some relief from the unpleasant effects of their bites.
In the very beginning of the year 1943 the other occupant, Karl Jakovlevich SCHMIDT (born in 1926), who shared the dugout with Konstantin and who had been his former class-mate, died from dysentery.
In spring 1943 they were all sent over to BUGURUSLAN, where they were housed in dug-out barracks with three-tier continuous bed boards, just beside the attic, were the grain was stored. There was no water, and dysentery spread even faster. Every day 4-5 patients were taken to the infirmary at Buguruslan station, almost nobody came back. They were buried in the cemetery near the aerodrome on top of a hill. It often happened that people hung themselves inside the barracks at night. One of the barracks was designated for women.
Shortly afterwards, they put up barbed-wire fences around the barracks and erected watch towers with guards at the corners. At that time Andrey Andreyevich SCHMIDT, former head of the militia in ENGELS (Autonomous Republic of the Volga Germans), who occupied some leading function within the camp, got in touch with the authorities. And he was successful in having the guards and the watch-towers removed. The barbed-wire fences, however, remained there unchanged.
There was another camp near BUGURUSLAN station, called ASGASSTROY. There were deported Germans, as well, who lived in straw huts half-built into the ground. Among them petrol workers, specialists from BAKU. Here the deportees worked in the oil production, assigned as mechanics and drilling-machine operators. The women mainly dug ditches and were registered in the same performance category and wage group as diggers. Together with the deported Germans were voluntary employees from Aserbeidshan who also produced petrol.
Konstantin worked as an installation mechanic.
Later the Germans were taken to POKHVISTNEVO station, 30 km West of BUGURUSLAN, but already situated in the KUYBYSHEV area. Konstantin worked there as a bit brace tractorist in the vehicle engineering office of the "Kinel Petrol" Trust. His work was the repair of the drill, when the pipes were drawn.
In POKHVISTNEVO the deported Germans founded an orchestra and played "Carmen", Chaikovsky and Strauss. In summertime the orchestra, which consisted of 22 musicians, used to play tangos and waltzes on the dancing ground. The German violinist KOLLO from Leningrad was among them, as well as Edwin FRITZLER (born around 1910), former student of the Moscow conservatory and a lady soloist from the theater in Astrakhan. And Svyatoslav RICHTER played the piccolo dombra.
In POKHVISTNEVO the deported Germans lived in big barracks, half-built into the ground, with loam floors and three-tier continuous bed boards for about 200 inmates.
In summer 1945 Konstantin addressed a petition to the commander's office. He asked for the permission to let him study at the art school. In autumn he was reported to the NKVD (People's Commissariate of the Interior) district department in POKHVISTNEVO, where the head of the district militia, SEMENITSKI, and the head of the regional militia from Kuybyshev showered abuse on him: "You are a German, you are not allowed to take up any studies!" - "But am I not a Soviet German?" - ""That makes no difference at all!"
SEMENITSKI beat him up and forced him to make a written and signed declaration that he would renounce his studies and that he would not to talk to anybody about this matter, otherwise he would be given 5 years.
After that Konstantin started to become aware of the fact that the militia was just waiting for a chance to pin on him section 58 (of the RSFSR criminal code subject to revolutionary crimes). The adults advised him to steal some small thing, in order to obtain a short term sentence, as was usually given to bytoviki (non-political, harmless criminals). This was the only possibility to get to a different place.
Konstantin did as he had been told. He was given 5 years. At the beginning of 1947 he was taken to the 17th camp sub-sector of the VJATLag. There he did the common (hard) gang labour, worked in the timber industry with a Canadian "hacksaw". During the day they received 600 gr of bread, plus a "bonus" ration (for production workers) of 200 gr, besides balanda (a thin soup which occasionally contained tiny pieces of cabbage, potatoes or fish). Against dysentery they administered cow wheat tea (Cyprus herbage), an extract from pine needles was said to help against scurvy.
In the VJATLag Konstantin had no chance to escape from pellagra. He was taken to the central 5th camp sub-sector, called "convalescence" section. They got to eat marrow and a 400 g ration of bread. In this camp sub-section they manufactured cardboard pencil boxes.
After the "recovery" Konstantin was transferred to the 15th camp sub-sector; from there he was sent, together with some other 50 men, to the remote camp sector at a distance of 10 km from the zone, where they were supposed to build dugouts (semlyankas) in winter.
Then he was forced to go to the 20th camp sub-sector, where the technical director, Alexander Ivanovich KOBER, assigned him to work at the timber collecting point. A. KOBER, a Ger-man from SAREPTY in the STALINGRAD region (today WOLGOGRAD), had been detained in the Trud-Army in VJATLag, then became a "voluntary employee" within his position of being a deportee.
The 15th, 17th and 20th camp sub-sectors were of approximately the same size. Each of them comprised 15-20 barracks. In the 17th camp sub-sector a book publisher from VIENNA, AUSTRIA, used to open the incoming parcels (i.e. the inmates received them already without packing material). He had taken the plane to attend a publishers' conference; the plane had unexpectedly landed in Moscow, where he was arrested and sentenced on section 58.
Konstantin received his release beginning 1952. They put him in a Stolypin-car and sent him from the 5th "central" camp sub-sector by an escorted transport to KRASNOYARSK.
There he was kept in a common cell (on the 1st floor, to the right) of the KRASNOYARSK prison. Jailed with him was the people's commissar of agricultural affairs of the Autonomous Republic of the Volga Germans, Viktor Jakovlevich ETZEL. He had been sentenced to
10 years on section 58 and, at the end of his term of imprisonment was deported to KRASNOYARSK. Afterwards they sent him from prison to the place of deportation - to the podkhoz (= agricultural institution/farm that provided the nationalized firms in the towns with agricultural products, such as potatoes, vegetables, grain, etc.) in MAGAN, district of SOVIETSK (today BERYOSOVSK), not far from the colonies. Presumably, his relatives lived there in internal exile.
Konstantin was removed from prison and taken to the Beresovsk military police. He came under "special registration", i.e. was put under military command. At the same time they forced him to sign a paper saying that he would renounce his possessions that had remained in his native village of GRIMM.
Alexander FRÜSORGER was taken prisoner in summer 1941 near Kiev. In 1945
he was "repatriated" to the BRATSKLag, Taishetstroy (= administrative
centre of large forced labour camps for lumbering; initial point for the BAM =
Baikal-Amur-Mainline Railroad)) of the BAM GULShDS (= Main Camp Administration
of Railroad Construction). Apparently, the BRATSKLag, too, served as a "filtration
camp" (= transit vetting forced labour camp).
He was sentenced on the decision of the Operational (Cheka) unit of 02.08.46 to a 6 years' exile and sent to KOLYMA, to the camp sub-sector of DUSKANYA, in the TENKINSK district, behind BUTUGYTSHAG.
He was "set free" from this exile on 03.08.52 and, as a German, immediately put under military command. He was released on 14.03.56 and remained with his family in TRANSPORTNY, just in this TENKINSK district. Thus, he was again unable to leave for a permanent residence.
He received his rehabilitation for the "second" period of exile through the UVD (= Admini-stration of Internal Affairs) of the Magadan region on 28.05.98.
His wife Valentina GUROVA (1920-1993) was arrested in MARIUPOL, STALINSK region (today DONEZK), on 29.01.45. Evidently, she was married.
On 12.02.45 she was sentenced to a 15 years KTR (= penal servitude, hard labour camp) and 5 years of "political and individual civil disfranchisement" by the military tribunal of the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) in the STALINSK region, in accordance with § 2 of the "Decree" of 19.04.43.
She was given this term for being accused of having "betrayed Soviet activists to the German police". Most probably the file had been so plainly forged that on 13.08.45 the military tribunal of the NKVD of the Ukrainian province reversed the file entry from "Decree" into § 54-1 "a" and the 15 years' KTR into 10 years of ITL (= corrective labour camp).
As of the 23.01.46 V.P. GUROVA was imprisonned in KOLYMA. Apparently, she was put under escort already in 1951. She was detained in the camp sub-sector of DUSKANYA. There she met A.K. FRÜSORGER. In December 1951 their daughter Ludmila was born.
V. GUROVA was released from camp custody on 17.08.53.
In 1961, after Andrey FRÜSORGER had died, she went with her daughter from TRANSPORTNY to Krasnoyarsk and settled down in Beryosovka.
V. GUROVA was rehabilitated by the Department of Public Prosecution of the DONEZK region (for lack of evidence) on 22.12.93; however, she did not live to see this rehabilitation.
Jan. 14, 1991, recorded by V.S. Birger, Krasnoyarsk, "Memorial" Society
Archives:
• copy of the rehabilitation certificate of Andrej (K.) Früsorger
• copy of the archival certificate on the "first" deportation
• copy of the letter of the Information Center of the Administration of Internal Affairs in the Magadan region
• copy of a photography from Andrej (K.) Früsorger's deportation file
• copy of the archival certificate on the arrest of V. GUROVA
• copy of the review letter of the Ukrainian State Security Deptartment iin the Donetsk
region