In September 1941 the authorities deported the German family
Merkel, Katharina Ivanovna (1894-1979, widow;
Merkel, Ivan Ivanovich (born in 1924, lives in Germany);
Merkel, Emilia Ivanovna (born in 1926, lives in Germany);
Merkel, Wilma Ivanovna (born in 1936, lives in Krasnoyarsk)
from the khutor of Mayanka, village council of Neudorf, canton Unterwalden, ASSR of the Volga Germans (the part of the canton which was farthest away from the river Volga).
K.I. Merkel’s husband died before the war yet. Till his death the family lived in the hamlet of Basel, in the same canton, on the left banks of the Volga.
On the 17.09.1941 K.I. Merkel and her children were loaded on board train N°. 813 leaving for Krasnoyarsk. There they were kept in barracks for about a month; afterwards, they were taken to Ilansk (not far from Kansk) and then to the southern part of the Ilansk district, to the village of Yuzhno-Aleksandrovka.
In January 1948 they came to mobilize I.I. Merkel into the “trud army”. He got to the Kraslag, - were he had to fell trees in the camp sub-section of Verkh-Tugusha (situated in the Ilansk District, too). Later, he was transferred to the neighbouring camp of Cheremshanka, not far from the village of Cheremshanka, which is situated just next to Yuzhno-Aleksandrovka. For that reason his family managed to send him parcels.
Two more German families happened to get to Yuzhno-Aleksandrovka; in 1942, however, they were chased further to the north to work for the “fishing industry”. Afterwards, K.I. Merkel and her children were the only ones who stayed in Yuzhno-Aleksandrovka.
K.I.Merkel’s elder daughters, Ella Ivanovna Triller (born in 1919, lives in Germany) and Yekaterina (Katharina) Ivanovna Gan (Hahn, 1921-1996), lived in the hamlet of Basel before the deportation. K.I. Hahn’s husband was fighting at the front; he is missing. She herself was sent into internal exile to the north – to work for the “fishing industry” near Chulkovo Station.
E.I. Triller and her husband got to Tasayevo, and early in 1942 they came to mobilize him into the “trud army” (Kraslag). He was sent to Verkh-Tugusha where he served his sentence together with I.I. Merkel. Later. he was transferred to Cheremshanka, too.
E.I. Triller asked the commndant for the permission to remove to the Ilansk District. She lived in Cheremshanka and later, in Yuzhno-Aleksandrvka together with her mother. In 1946 her husband and I.I. Merkel were relased from the Kraslag. She and her husband, as well as K.I. Merkel and her children then stayed in Yuzhno-Aleksandrovka and worked for the kolkhoz farm, until they were finally released from internal exile, which happened on the 05.02.1956.
K.I.Merkel was rehabilitated by the Information Center of the Authority of the Interior of the Saratov Region on the 22.12.1998. E.I. Merkel received her rehabilitation paper on the 18.07.1994; it was also issued by the Information Center of the Authority of the Interior of the Saratov Region.